


Squirrels From Hell

by Kinggorilla



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M, Implied Relationships, Implied Violence, Trapped, classic, occasional salty language, someone has a stomach virus with predictable results
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-08-24 09:10:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 66,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16637051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kinggorilla/pseuds/Kinggorilla
Summary: While exploring an unknown world, SG-1 will face an enemy like none they've encountered before.  But what if an enemy really isn't an enemy?





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> The events herein could take place at almost any point in Season 2.

Chapter 1  
In which Jack O’Neill stubs his toe

 

"Move out, campers," barked Colonel Jack O'Neill. "The garden paradise of P8X-362 awaits. At this time we ask that you observe all posted signs and refrain from flash photography. Do not, under any circumstances, feed the bears.”

The four members of SG-1 silently descended from the stone platform housing the stargate and spread into a loose fan formation. O'Neill felt a tingle of pride as he noted the way his team unconsciously slid into a position the would allow them to assume a strong defensive posture in a matter of seconds. Dr. Daniel Jackson and Captain Samantha Carter occupied the center of the fan, while O'Neill and the hulking Jaffa, Teal'c, held down the ends. The tall, spare form of O'Neill and the tall, bulkier form of Teal'c dwarfed the more normally proportioned Carter and Jackson.

They moved out, O'Neill and Carter cradling their MP-5s, Teal'c carrying his staff blaster, and Jackson armed, in theory, with a 9mm sidearm, but in actuality carrying nothing more dangerous than a notebook and a brace of Bic gel pens. The fan formation would allow interlocking fields of fire in a full 180 degree arc out to 500 yards. Not that there appeared to be any reason to shoot, at least at the moment. 

The cold dialing program Carter had devised was paying surprising dividends, their current mission being full fruits of that labor. An unexpected hit had led them to this world. M.A.L.P. reconnaissance had confirmed conditions suitable for humans, and as an added bonus, had discovered a complex of ruins not far from the gate. The M.A.L.P. had sat quiet and unmolested for forty eight hours observing weather patterns, day/night cycles and a dozen other parameters before a mission go-ahead was given.

The planet designated P8X-362 was slightly smaller than Earth, with a touch more gravity, and the part visible to O'Neill strongly reminded him of sub-Saharan Africa. It was a mistake, the mission briefings constantly reminded them, to assume the real estate around the stargate was representative of the entire planet, but O'Neill could have cared less if the polar caps were composed of neapolitan ice cream; what he had to worry about was right in front of them. 

A hundred yards away from the gate were the stone ruins of what appeared to have once been a rather ornate building. Rust-colored stains from oxides leaching out of the rock streaked the few remaining upright walls. The ruins and stargate were in the middle of a sizeable clearing, perhaps a quarter of a mile across, which was ringed by thick forest. Thin, scrubby grass covered dry red dirt. 

As they narrowed the distance to the building, O'Neill, Carter, and Teal'c constantly scanned the ruins, the treeline, the sky, and back again, alert for the signs of habitation: a stray footprint, a forest trail, animal calls, wood smoke, any of the thousand possible giveaways that people might be about. With the single mindedness of his trade, Jackson had eyes only for the ruins.

This had obviously been an important building in its time, which surprised no one. The vast majority of stargates had a temple or other seat of governance nearby, except in those instances of advanced cultures, where it was even money it would be in a science-related or military facility of some kind. These ruins had been an imposing edifice once, but now all that remained were two more or less intact cubes of building connected by a sort of mezzanine or catwalk about thirty feet long, and several stretches of wall, some interconnected, some freestanding.

The coast seemed to be clear. No one appeared to welcome them, or object to their presence, another occurrence which was also split about 50/50. Every member of the team fervently hoped that would not change. 

There were no bird calls, no buzzing insects, nothing to break the absolute silence except the soft rustle of the wind through the trees and the even softer scuff of their boots in the grass. SG- 1 split with the precision of a drill squad, two and two, going left and right, circling the building. Nothing met the eye. Not a footprint, not a bent blade of grass, nothing. As far as exploring went, this was shaping up to be a complete bust, with the exception of the ruined structure. They looped around the central building and regrouped on the gate side of the structure, where the the M.A.L.P. was still quietly, patiently recording data, as it had for the past two days.

Sometimes appearances were deceiving, O'Neill reminded himself, and sometimes an abandoned building was just an abandoned building. Time to start doing what we do. Jackson, not feeling the strictures of military discipline, had already entered the ruins, and the snap-snap-snap of a camera shutter was audible.

"Alright, Daniel, you're supposed to survey, so survey away," O'Neill ordered, making it official. "Carter, get the M.A.L.P. back through the gate, then see if Daniel needs any help. Teal'c and I are gonna set a perimeter and check the treeline."

"Yes, sir," Carter acknowledged, then immediately bent double and vomited. 

"Sam!," Daniel blurted, moving away from his examination of a wrecked wall, immediately followed by O'Neill's more cautious, "Carter, ya o.k.?"

She didn't answer, just spit bile for a moment before another heave followed the first. O'Neill noted in passing that the Captain hadn't eaten much in the way of breakfast. He grabbed the carry strap sewn onto the back of her tactical vest and levered her upright.

"Feel better?," he asked. She gave him a sheepish grin, while fishing out her canteen and taking a swig to wash away the nasty taste.

"Didn't ever feel bad, sir. No nausea, no rumbles. It just came out of nowhere."

"All right," he conceded, then gave her a quick once-over. Her eyes were a little watery, but she appeared none the worse for wear. "Let me know if it gets to be an issue, ok?"

She gave him a quick nod of acknowledgement. He and Teal'c had just turned back to the forest when the unmistakable liquid sound of someone throwing up split the still air.

"Dammit, Carter," he began, spinning to face the offending Captain, at the same moment she shouted, "Daniel!" 

Jackson was down on one knee, bracing himself against a dusty ruined wall. O'Neill had started toward Jackson when his stomach unexpectedly convulsed, and it was his turn to be sick. He studied the results for a moment, wondering how pancakes could be that color, then straightened and watched Teal'c expectantly.

"Yes?," the big Jaffa rumbled. O'Neill shrugged and gave him an innocent look.

"I figured it was your turn," he explained.

"I feel fine," was all the explanation Teal'c felt like giving. It was one of his qualities O'Neill admired the most: being able to sum up an entire conversation in one sentence or less. Well, that and his ability to unleash an almost indescribable amount of carnage with nothing more than staff weapon and bare hands.

"Did either of you feel anything before... you know?," Carter asked. Jackson shook his head, rinsing his mouth and spitting into the dusty red dirt.

"Nope," O'Neill replied. "One second I'm busy being a Colonel, giving orders, the next... Chunks."

"Sir, all three of us being sick this close together wouldn't be caused by something on the Earth side of the gate." Carter launched into a broad thumbnail sketch of virus epidemiology, including a fine bit about incubation periods. O'Neill, appreciating her enthusiasm, let her go on for a good minute before he held up a hand to slow her down.

"Bottom line," he summed up her argument, " we're all reacting to something on this side of the gate, not ours."

"Right, sir," Carter replied, then turned an odd shade of pale green and vomited again. He saw her legs go wobbly and knew she was in bad shape. He grabbed her carry handle and started hauling her unresisting form in the direction of the gate. 

"All right," he announced, "we're outta here." He shifted his grip to get a better hold on Carter's vest and was about to admonish Jackson to hurry up when the younger man also vomited again. That meant... 

Right on schedule, his stomach lurched and he found himself looking at the ground once more. It wasn't so bad the second time around, he thought, likely because there wasn't much left to bring up.

"Teal'c," he rasped, spitting angrily, "if you're still o.k., bring the M.A.L.P. If not, just get your ass to the gate." 

Half carrying, half dragging Carter, they staggered back to the stargate. She seemed to be much harder hit than the others. His legs were a little rubbery, and he had the beginnings of a world-shattering headache, but he wasn't having any trouble walking, even supporting the increasingly-flaccid Captain. About fifty yards out, Jackson passed them and had the stargate address for Earth half-dialed when they got there. In the distance to the rear, they heard the electric motor of the M.A.L.P. whining in protest as Teal'c manipulated it toward the portal. 

Jackson palmed the large red jewel in the center of the DHD, and the familiar vortex splashed overhead as the event horizon stabilized itself. O'Neill quickly tapped out SG-1's iris code, received a confirmation reply, and the three bedraggled humans staggered through the wormhole, emerging in the embarcation room of the SGC, followed by M.A.L.P. and Jaffa. 

The instant they hit the grating in front of the gate, all three felt immeasurable better, and not just because they were back home safely.

"What was that?," Jackson asked.

Carter pulled herself fully upright and Colonel and Captain exchanged puzzled looks. Headaches and nausea had completely disappeared the moment they rematerialized.

"I've gotten over hangovers before," O'Neill grumbled, "but not that quickly, and never without aspirin."

"This doesn't make any sense, sir," she agreed. “I feel fine now.”

General Hammond's voice, coming through the intercom, echoed loudly in the cavernous room.

"SG-1, what is your situation? You haven't been gone for ten minutes."

"Trying to set a new record for shortest mission, general," O'Neill quipped. No one else in the SGC would have dared answer their CO in such a flippant fashion. Carter decided for what seemed like the thousandth time to try and bail O'Neill out before Hammond handed him his ass on a golden platter.

"Headed for the infirmary, sir," she explained. 

"Looks like we might need to invest in some Dramamine, general," Jackson added. 

However much O'Neill might trade on Hammond's patience, he knew he could only push so far. The general's solicitude for the well-being of personnel under his command was legendary and he would not tolerate things going wrong with them. Besides, despite being a two star general, Hammond was really a decent man, which everyone in the Cheyenne Mountain complex appreciated greatly.

"Go ahead SG-1; I'll be there shortly." O'Neill was halfway through the door already, with Carter and Jackson at his heels. Teal'c handed the M.A.L.P. controller to a waiting technician, then followed his teammates.

An in-depth medical examination turned up nothing unusual. Jackson had a slight sinus infection. Carter had a mild case of iron deficiency. O'Neill had two titanium pins in his right leg and an impressive array of shrapnel scattered around in various parts of his body. Teal'c had a Goa'uld symbiote in the pouch in his belly. They were, in fact, exactly the same as they had been at a routine examination following the 0700 mission briefing that morning. Dr. Fraiser had been hoping for something new and exotic to work on, but was finally forced to admit complete bafflement, and ended her evaluation by accusing them of a very poorly conceived prank. The stains on their BDU shirts were the only proof of things going awry.

SG-1 dutifully trooped back to the conference room to make report to Hammond. Following what was possibly the shortest de-brief in SGC history, they called it a day, and broke up; Teal'c going to his quarters, Jackson heading to his apartment in town, and O'Neill zooming off to his home in the rolling hills between Peterson AFB and Colorado Springs. It was, he reflected, a pretty sweet gig, when you could call it a day at 2:30 in the afternoon.

Captain Carter, on the other hand, wasn't ready to throw in the towel yet. Working on the assumption that idle hands were the devil's workshop, she signed out the M.A.L.P.'s sensor logs from the support techs, and took them to her office to examine in depth. 

"Office" may have been a bit grandiose. The term conjured images of a nice desk, a comfy chair, possibly a credenza or armoire, maybe even a tasteful painting or two. In actuality, it appeared more like someone had taken an Air Force standard cubicle and smashed it into a laboratory and then sprinkled it with diced workshop. Perhaps fairy dust would have been a more accurate ingredient, considering the number of nigh-miraculous events that had happened within its confines. It was meticulously neat, while at the same time it couldn't help but be, as O'Neill had had occasion to describe it, "a bit busy." She had taken exception to that. The Colonel had no room to talk. His own "office" looked like it had taken a direct hit from a Mark IV cluster bomb, and she had always assumed he used a tame black hole as a filing system. 

The sensor logs were enormous, consisting of thousands of lines of individual code entries, and it was hours later before she found an anomaly that started to explain things. After the first painstaking piece of data, more followed, then they started coming hot and fast, and in another hour, she knew what had happened. 

Another HOUR. She looked at the clock and groaned. It was almost 22:00 hours. Reporting this could wait. 

It did wait, until the 0700 briefing next morning. And nothing bad happened because she put it off.

 

"At ease, people. Take your seats," General George Hammond said, as he entered the conference room, one minute early for the morning briefing. There was an actual briefing room one level down, adjacent to their ready rooms, but everyone preferred to use the conference room because it had much nicer chairs. 

"Captain Carter thinks she has something that may explain your... difficulties yesterday." 

Despite a ream of security protocols, rumors had spread through the SGC and the members of SG-1 had been ribbed mercilessly this morning. All except Teal'c. The stone moai of Easter Island were probably the only humanoid forms on the planet that could survive ribbing the Jaffa.

"I went through the M.A.L.P.'s sensor logs from the time we re-materialized on P8X-362 until we had our first round of... er, illness," she began, warming to her subject. O'Neill recognized the look, and launched a rhetorical pre-emptive strike.

"And you found?," he asked.

"Ultrasonics, sir."

"Ultrasonics," he repeated slowly, rolling the word around his mouth as though gauging its flavor.

"Ultrasonics," she affirmed. "Sounds with a frequency above 18 kilohertz and completely undetectable by ear."

"I seem to recall something about that, Carter," he said. "Now tell me how something the base dentist uses to clean my teeth made us sick yesterday."

"Well, sir, using your example, the sonic pick the dentist has is very small in scale and works in a confined space. Law enforcement agencies have used larger-scale broad frequency ultrasonics called LRADs for non-violent crowd dispersal for many years."

"Damn The Man," O'Neill commented under his breath, envisioning bearded hippies being chased down the streets of town by The Man. He had no particular animus towards hippies, aside from possibly their tendency to avoid soap and water. Teal'c sat quietly, hands folded, patiently absorbing information.

"Carter," O'Neill said, "when we were out there, you were pretty well wiped out, Daniel and I were in rough shape, and Teal'c was his usual solid self." A bit of an understatement; the mountainous Jaffa had show no ill effects from start to finish. "Why didn't it affect him? Junior's doing?," he asked, in reference to Teal'c's juvenile symbiote. 

"Honestly, sir, I don't know," she admitted. "My initial impulse was that my lesser body mass might have played a role in my reaction, while Teal'c's greater mass would have insulated him somewhat from the effects, but that's pure speculation on my part." O'Neill still wondered if the symbiote had played a part.

"In any event," she continued, "the M.A.L.P. recorded ultrasonic waves in the 20 kilohertz range. Extended exposure to ultrasonics in this range can lead to headaches, nausea, vomiting, disorientation, and from there things can get unpleasant."

"Things get unpleasant from there?," O'Neill wanted to know. "Do tell."

"Vertigo, panic, paranoia; depending on the subject's underlying conditions, stroke or heart attack are not out of the question. Use of LRADs has come under scrutiny recently because some of the effects can be permanent, whereas non-lethal weapons are supposed to have a temporary effect only." Carter wasn't done yet. She still had a bigger bomb to drop.

"Most importantly, there was no detectable transmission point."

"What is the significance of that?," Hammond asked, frowning.

"Sir, ultrasonics are simply sound waves too high pitched for us to hear," she began, again warming to the subject. O'Neill braced himself, knowing there was no way to forestall a scientific explanation and jump to the end of the conversation. "Any wave has to have a source, where it originates from, be it a radio station in the case of sound, or a flashlight, to use the example of light waves. The point is, that origin point can be located by tracing the waves backwards to the source. In this case, there was no artificial point of origin. The planet itself was the point of origin." She spent a second wondering if she had used too many "points" in one sentence, but Hammond seemed to get the "point".

"Is there any possibility this is being used as a weapon, like you mentioned for crowd control?," he asked.

"I just don't see it, General," she replied. "This isn't something you could make a planet do; it would have to already do so naturally. It's conceivable you could terraform a planet with this characteristic programmed into its matrix, but I can't imagine what you would possibly gain from that. This seems to be a really improbable geological fluke." 

O'Neill broke in, desperate to put an end to all the science talk.

"Bottom line," he said, "is there any way to shut it off?"

"No sir," Carter answered, "not any more than I could shut off its gravity or magnetic field, but...," 

There it was. 'But.' There was always a 'but' when Carter was involved, and he'd been waiting for it. He waved his hand, inviting elaboration.

"There is a work-around," she said, handing him a small delicate piece of plastic. He examined it carefully, rotating it around, looking from every angle, even going so far as to sniff it before gingerly placing the item on the table.

"You're telling me that the thing that will make everything right, the crucial piece of gear we need to make this mission a success is a pair of noise-cancelling headphones?," he asked incredulously.

"Yes, sir," she said with a self-satisfied, almost smug, grin. "Though they do come in earbud size as well, for those who don't like the air traffic controller model."  
Honestly, there was no antagonism between them, this was just as close as she could get to publicly teasing him without being insubordinate. Carter had raised the baiting of senior officers to near-art-form levels.

"You realize the Air Force doesn't do product placement, right?," O'Neill asked acidly.

"All right," said Hammond, wanting to forestall another verbal exchange. "We have a potential solution. Now the question becomes, is it worth our while to go back? Dr. Jackson?" 

Jackson had been chomping at the bit, waiting for his turn. He usually got to go first, and present some seemingly impossible-to-cope-with-issue which Carter would have to find a work-around for. Going backwards in this case had thrown his game off a little.

"The ruins we saw are made of a hard, igneous rock, not unlike granite in composition. They are definitely artificial in origin, and not naturally occurring. There are no signs of an impact or debris field, so we can safely assume that the central structure here," he rattled on while passing out several enlargements of pictures he had taken yesterday, "has only been acted on by climatic factors such as wind and rain." 

He paused for dramatic effect, and O'Neill gave him a look that clearly said 'Step on it, sonny'. Jackson had the disconcerting habit of speaking almost unintelligibly fast when he was excited about a subject, and with the added impetus of O'Neill giving him snarky looks, everyone in the room had to listen carefully.

"Given the extent of erosion in places and the lack of speed with which climatic factors work, we could easily be looking at the remains of a building constructed 50 to 75 million years ago, well before the accepted age of the stargate system."

He hadn't needed to pause for effect; that was a startling enough statement on its own. Teal'c was the first to react.

"Even the race known as the Ancients are not that old, Daniel Jackson," he rumbled.

"Nobody we know of is that old," added Carter. They took a moment to process the idea.

"Dr. Jackson, are you telling me we may have evidence of an older race than any previously encountered?," Hammond asked.

"Potentially," Jackson replied. "It's hard to make that call based off of less than thirty seconds’ examination and a handful of scratchy pictures.”

“Is it possible,” Carter began slowly, “that we’ve been wrong about who built the gate system all this time? Could these have been the gate builders?” Jackson shook his head.

“No. The evidence we have showing the Ancients built the gate system is circumstantial, but pretty convincing. This writing,” he gestured with another set of photographs in his hand, “is entirely different than anything I’ve encountered before. The Ancients were never shy about writing all over anything they owned, so we have lots of samples of their script.” A thought suddenly occurred to O’Neill.

“Any chance these might be the Furlings?,” he asked. Ever since learning of the Alliance of the Four Races, he had been especially keen to find the Furlings. They had already met Nox and Asgard, and neither had seemed inclined to share technology. Apparently they were several millennia too late to meet the Ancients, though that race had left behind a most excellent stargate system and a few other odds and ends which were mostly beyond the ability of terrestrial science to understand. O’Neill still held great hopes for the Furlings. Jackson squashed that dream mercilessly.

“No,” he said. “The whole of what we know about the Furlings came from the writings at the Heliopolis site on Ernest’s Planet. This script, again, is completely unlike anything we’ve seen before. We can, at least, speculate that the inhabitants of P8X-362 were friendly with the Ancients, possibly even allies. That would account for the presence of a stargate on their world.”

“Unless the Goa’uld put it there,” Carter interjected. 

“Teal’c, is that likely?,” Hammond asked the Jaffa. “Would they have put a gate there?”

“The Goa’uld are scavengers, not explorers,” he rumbled in reply. “They would not have gone to the trouble to put a stargate there, unless that world contained something they greatly desired. A naquadah mine, for example. A single piece of technology would not justify that; they would come in ships and take what they wished. They would only have placed a stargate on this world if they foresaw a long term presence there.” It was almost the longest speech any of them had ever heard him make.

“What does your gut say?,” O’Neill asked. Teal’c cocked his head, and gave O’Neill the raised eyebrow, which clearly conveyed ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

“Your gut,” O’Neill repeated. “Hunch? Suspicion? Intuition? Informed opinion? Wild guess?”

Teal’c stared at him, unmoved.

“There's something else you should see," Jackson interrupted. He passed out four more enlarged photos. The first three showed heavily eroded lines of a sinuous script, vaguely resembling Arabic, carved into the stone wall of the building. The last picture captured everyone's attention. 

It showed a carving of a vaguely humanoid figure standing upright. The figure bore unmistakable reptilian features. Its body bent in places they weren't accustomed to seeing bends, and it had a disconcertingly snake-like head.

"As you know, every race we have encountered thus far has been humanoid in form, and conforming to the same basic standards of physiology," Jackson began. Carter jumped in.

"Our assumption has always been that the original gate builders placed gates on worlds that met some broad general criteria with regard to atmospheric composition, gravity, temperature and the like."

"Yes," agreed Jackson. "Asgard, Nox, and Ancients all had a similar physiology, a particularly mammalian physiology. This," he indicated the photo, "shows clear signs of being very different in physical makeup. At the very least, it is far more reptilian in nature than the Unas, which is the most reptilian species we've encountered thus far." O'Neill shuddered, remembering their sole run-in with an Unas.

"So you're telling me there's a race of super-Unas out there somewhere?", he asked.

"That may be a bit much to infer from a single picture," Jackson answered. "General, at the very least I'd like to spend a day or two going through the ruins. If it looks promising, we could send over a full archaeology team." Hammond turned the idea around in his mind for a moment.

"Wouldn't these ultrasonic frequencies affect the reptilian creatures the same way it affected you?," he asked. 

Daniel was on the verge of confessing he had no idea when Carter jumped in.

"Not necessarily, sir. Most terrestrial reptiles don't have an ear or a sense of hearing in the way we think of it. They have several bone structures in their heads that allow them to feel low-frequency vibrations, but nothing that would allow them to recognize sounds as we know them. Again, its supposition on my part, but if these creatures don't deviate too greatly from what we're familiar with, they wouldn't notice the ultrasonics any more than you would notice a dog whistle." She added a belated, "Sir." 

O'Neill's eyes had glazed over halfway through her explanation, but he got the general impression the answer was 'no'.

"Is there any chance there might be some of these reptilians still around?," Hammond asked. Jackson shook his head.

"I think it's highly unlikely, given the age of the ruins. You didn't notice any signs of habitation, did you?" This last was directed at O'Neill and Teal'c.

"Not a thing," O'Neill confirmed. "General, I'm with Daniel on this one. It couldn't hurt to snoop around a little."

"All right, SG-1," Hammond confirmed. "You have a go. Departure time is 0900 hours."

 

They spent the time wisely. Jackson gathered several source materials he thought might be helpful in understanding a 100 million year old dead culture no one had ever heard of and an alphabet no one had dreamed existed. Carter made a few modifications to their headphones, refining the breadth of frequencies it could cancel, and making sure it could interface with the two-way radios. Then she added a chin strap to the larger models in case they needed to be worn in rougher conditions, or while sleeping. O'Neill and Teal'c assembled the team's gear and checked weapons. 

At some point in the past, an egghead type at the Pentagon had put pencil to paper and figured out that it cost the American taxpayer slightly over a million dollars every time the stargate was activated Earthside. This obviously didn't apply when the gate was activated from offworld. The culprit was the matter stream. They could send and receive broadcast transmissions and even M.A.L.P. telemetry for next to nothing, but when the gate had to break down and re-assemble matter, the power consumption skyrocketed. While the SGC would support its personnel in the field no matter the cost, they had been trying to save budget space whenever possible. The short version was that, even though the ruins they were visiting were only about a hundred yards from the stargate, SG-1 would get the pleasure of camping out for the scheduled 48 hours of the mission.

Carter confirmed that the M.A.L.P. sensor had shown very nice weather at the site, with very little temperature variation, so O'Neill decided to skip the tents and sleeping bags and packed a set of foam ground pads to sleep on. A full weapons loadout and two cases of MREs didn't quite have the same ring as the "loaf of bread and jug of wine" referenced in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, but O'Neill felt it was just as good. While the supply case was open, he slipped in a few other odds and ends that weren’t strictly regulation, but weren’t explicitly forbidden either. Two five gallon water cans completed the load. They hadn't noticed any water in their truncated reconnoiter, and it was always safest to bring their own food and drink from Earthside. 

As O'Neill and Teal'c finished strapping their gear to a baggage rover, Carter and Jackson arrived with their respective contributions. Carter was carrying a slim case not much larger than a laptop computer. Jackson had a cart carrying several bulky storage cases that elicited grunts from both O'Neill and Teal'c as they muscled them up on the rover.

"I'm pretty sure it wasn't necessary to bring rocks, Daniel," O'Neill grumbled. "I saw quite a few while we were there." To forestall the inevitable verbal sparring match, Carter opened her case to exhibit four sizable pairs of headphones, along with several pairs of earbuds. O’Neill was interested in spite of himself.

“This’ll do the trick, right?,” he asked skeptically. Carter nodded assent.

“I don’t have the proper equipment here to conduct an actual test, but all of the computer simulations I’ve run have shown full cancellation of the ultrasonic frequencies in question.”

O’Neill’s face showed his distaste for computer simulations.

“But this’ll do the trick, right?,” he asked again, noticing she hadn’t said ‘yes’, which was what he really wanted to hear.

“Yes, sir. They will also replace the earpiece of our radios, so we can maintain communications as normal.” O’Neill thought that was pretty neat, and said so.

“Well done, Captain,” he complimented her, then was back to business.

“All right, kiddies,” he said, checking his watch, “ it’s fifteen minutes ‘til we pile in the station wagon for the trip to grandma’s house. I’d recommend you all take a last bathroom break, get a drink of water, and meet your travelling buddy in the gate room, pronto. Now, beat it.”

They beat it. It was at this point that Jack O’Neill carelessly stubbed his big toe on the right rear tire of the rover.


	2. Two

Chapter 2  
In which Daniel Jackson discovers something

 

Their second advent on P8X-362 was much less exciting than the first, which had been rather underwhelming, at best. They had no right to make assumptions about events that might have happened while they were away. In fact, O’Neill’s standard operating procedure was to assume the worst, which in this case would translate to three Goa’uld motherships in orbit and a legion of Jaffa holding the gate.

To all outward appearances, nothing had changed. 

“I don’t need to remind you,” O’Neill said to nobody in particular, “that the loss of your ultrasonic-killing ear gizmos will quickly send you to Camp Wanna-chuck, so keep an eye out for each other. Move out.”

They repeated their previous maneuvers, circling the ruins, seeing the same nothing they had seen before. After a short huddled conference, they split into two groups. Jackson and Carter would begin a survey of the ruined complex; O’Neill and Teal’c would find something vaguely military-ish to entertain themselves with in the meantime. Experiencing a strong sense of deja vu, they got to work.

 

O'Neill and Teal'c walked the perimeter, eyes constantly moving for anything that looked out of place. They slipped further back into the forest, ten yards, then twenty, paralleling the treeline. O'Neill 's woodcraft was good. A lifetime of special operations missions had sharpened it, and SG recon missions had honed it to a razor's edge, but he was in awe of Teal'c's skills. For all his size, the mountainous Jaffa ghosted through the forest with the ease and silence of a great jungle cat. Every sense alert, he gave the impression of one who was hunting, rather than scouting. For the thousandth time, O'Neill was grateful Teal'c was on their side.

Here they were in their element. SG-1 would fight like rabid honey badgers if the need arose, but their primary mandate was recon and exploration. O'Neill wasn't above ambushing the occasional stray Jaffa patrol, but when confronted with a large enemy force, their preferred tactic was to fade back into the long grass and silently disappear. Their MP5s were superb close quarters weapons, but the 9mm round they were chambered for was a little light for any engagement over sixty yards or so. That was best left to the Marines of SGs 3 and 5; their heavier weapons were better suited to tackling a large OPFOR.

Every rock, bush and twig was scrutinized. Every forest glade was examined, evaluated, and then passed by. Every fallen tree, every patch of moss was painstakingly gone over. There should have been the twitter of birds, the buzzing of insects, the scuttling feet of small woodland creatures, but nothing broke the stillness. Nothing but the soft sighing of the wind through the trees. An hour passed, then a second, while they were so engaged. It was boring, sweaty, exciting, meticulous work, and O’Neill loved every contradictory minute of it.

This was a garden-variety deciduous forest. O'Neill smirked to himself, proud of the pun. The trunks of trees rose straight from a tangle of underbrush thick enough to stall a tank. There should have been animal trails cutting through the undergrowth at the very least. Nothing but brambles, ferns, and moss greeted the eye. Both men began to grow uneasy in the silence. By unspoken accord, they pushed their way back to the clearing. The silence had begun to grow oppressive. There were too many 'shoulds' and 'ought to have beens' in this forest. 

With the exception of the copious plant life, this was a dead world. It was getting to be a bit depressing. All of the thousand and one details they felt 'made' a planet were missing, swallowed up in silence. Shaking off the sudden gloom, they made their way back to the ruins. O’Neill spared the occasional backward glance at the forest they had just left. Teal’c noticed his companion’s uneasiness.

“Do you feel as though you are being watched?,” he asked in a deep bass rumble.

“No, I don’t,” O’Neill replied with a scowl. “Frankly, that worries me more than if I did think we were being watched. You?” Teal’c shook his head.

“I do not think anyone has been here for a very long time.”

Rounding a corner, they were confronted with Jackson staring dreamily at a wall full of the roiling alien script. Carter had finished photographing, and was engaged in clearing away accumulated debris from the base of the wall with a small folding shovel.

"Daniel?," O'Neill asked gently. Jackson waved him away impatiently with a curt "Ssshh." After the sweaty gloom of the deserted forest, O'Neill didn't take being shushed very well.

"Carter!," he barked, "is there anything shush-worthy going on at the moment?"

Looking up, she bit her lip and gave him a shrug. For all she knew, Jackson was communing with his inner spirit animal. He hadn't seemed to notice her presence for the last half-hour.

"You know how he gets, sir," she offered lamely.

"Daniel," O'Neill repeated, more forcefully. "What's going on?"

"Rocks," the younger man murmured. "I'm waiting for the rocks to speak."

"Rocks," O'Neill mimicked skeptically. "And what, pray tell, are the rocks supposed to tell you?" 

"Their makers, their history, their dreams," Jackson replied. "Many things."

"Rocks," O'Neill repeated again, feeling the beginnings of a headache behind his right eye. “Have any of the rocks talked to you yet?” he inquired acidly. 

Jackson shook himself out of his abstraction long enough to answer.

“One did earlier.” This piqued O’Neill’s interest.

“And what did it say?,” he asked. Jackson frowned in answer.

“I couldn’t be sure. It’s voice was really gravelly.”

That did it. O'Neill's right eyebrow began to twitch, and faced with the options of walking away or assaulting the younger man, he walked away. Jackson was a good fellow, but he could be a bit much at times. This was one of those times. O’Neill favored Teal’c with a barbarous scowl.

“I think,” he said slowly, “that I preferred it back in the forest.”

 

The Vlendisferne, for such were the reptilian humanoids called, had been an ancient and venerable people. They had the distinction of being the second race in the galaxy to achieve sentience. Their civilization had advanced, achieved spaceflight, explored their quadrant of the galaxy, gone into decline, and died out long eons before the first mammal had risen on Earth. If humanity had begun their long evolutionary climb late in the afternoon of life, then the Vlendisferne had been early risers on creation’s first dew-drenched morning. 

In all their exploration not once had they encountered another sentient species. In fact, the largest alien form of life they had encountered was no larger than a medium-sized dog. Throughout the entirety of their race’s existence, they had never needed weaponry, never faced existential threats, or dealt with anything more catastrophic than the occasional severe weather pattern.

As mankind had emulated their simian progenitors by creating ever more elaborate and complex artificial tree dwellings out of metal and glass , the Vlendisferne had followed their reptilian ancestors by residing for the most part in vast subterranean cities. The immeasurable series of underground vaults, complex in design and breathtaking in execution would have excited envy in the hearts of the most avaricious of Tolkien’s dwarves. The cavern system had been carved out of the living rock to house a mature race for all eternity. Their homes still remained beneath the surface, silent and empty, and would remain that way until the sun swallowed their world.

Their space exploration phase gradually came to an end, more through boredom than any other cause. The galaxy was still much too young to have very many interesting things to explore. You see, Dr. Jackson had undershot the mark in his estimation of the age of P8X-362’s ruins, by a factor of at least ten. The igneous stone of the crumbled buildings was more closely akin to the naquadah of the stargate than it was to granite. The ruins had been there, not for 50 million years, but for 500 million years. The reptilians, as a race, had arisen and begun their long uphill evolutionary struggle almost a billion years ago.

Wearying of empty space, the Vlendisferne had turned their attention inward, focusing on philosophy, mathematics, the arts and social sciences. They were a gentle people, and their interests reflected that. If there had been any interplanetary neighbors in that part of the galaxy, they might have described them as ‘sweet old folks.’ 

When the decline of their race became unavoidable, their greatest minds had designed several buildings to be constructed at various locations throughout their solar system, on planets with widely varying environmental conditions. Their hope was that these structures would serve as historical markers for any species who came after, regardless of their biology or environment. They were built of the most durable materials the Vlendisferne could devise, and on the walls they carved the sum of all their knowledge. Everything of importance to their race, whether it was mathematics, science, philosophy, art, music, or any of a dozen other fields of study that had no human equivalent, was engraved for all to see. 

The buildings were seeded with a radioactive isotope that would effloresce when scanned with any type of energy beam, hopefully rendering them visible at great distances. At the least, the radioactivity would be detectable from orbit. It was the cosmic equivalent of leaving the porch light on at night. The last of the Vlendisferne died, and their painstakingly erected monuments sat, unnoticed, for almost a quarter of a billion years. As the millions of years passed, the radioactive isotopes in the monuments decayed into stable elements, and they went cold and dark. 

They were discovered, accidentally, by the race known as the Ancients, who found them intriguing enough to explore the planet further. Before long, the underground cities were discovered, and after uncounted millennia of dormancy, P8X-362 once again became a bustling beehive of activity. The Ancients placed a stargate on the planet solely for the purpose of expediting their study of the world and its previous inhabitants. In time, having wrung every last drop of information from the dead world, the Ancients departed, leaving their gate behind, and the home of the Vlendisferne once again sat undisturbed for additional millions of years, until the advent of SG-1.

This information is vouchsafed to you, dear reader, so that you will not spend time worrying about the reappearance of a possibly hostile alien race, or thinking that the ruins of P8X-362 were some sort of elaborate trap. Had any of the Vlendisferne been alive to hear either suggestion, they would have been mortified. Sadly none of this was known to the team members of SG-1, nor would it be known to any other human for many years to come.

Following the conclusion of this exploratory mission, all information concerning P8X-362 was vetted, collated and filed appropriately. During the transfer of physical files from temporary storage to their permanent storage facility, a handcart full of file boxes being guided by Airman First Class Peterson was involved in a collision with another cart carrying an oxyacetylene torch being guided in the opposite direction by Sergeant Siler. 

In the ensuing chaos, best described as a blizzard of paper punctuated by the hollow metallic grind of highly explosive acetylene tanks rolling down the hallway, everyone on the scene began grabbing wayward file folders and stuffing them into boxes, heedless of organization. Much more attention was being paid to corralling the wayward cylinders of welding materials than the niceties of proper alphabetization. 

The upshot was that all materials related to P8X-362 were thoughtlessly jammed into a file folder containing the requisition paperwork for Alpha site’s janitorial supplies, fiscal years 1998-2000. There they would remain until February of 2124, when they were discovered by the eminent Finnish historian Jens Mikkonen, who was doing research for a scholarly book on the history of early Terran gate travel. 

In the press of subsequent Earth-threatening events, the unproductive mission to an enigmatic dead world was quickly forgotten, and no one ever thought to follow up with additional research, which might have prompted a search for the wayward files. It was a shame, because contained in Jackson’s painstaking notes and the thousands of images Carter had taken were alien inscriptions detailing information like the ultimate eradication of disease, the theory behind cheap easily accessible cold fusion, how to manufacture totally frictionless surfaces, and many other fascinating tidbits of knowledge. The human race could have potentially leapfrogged a hundred years or more forward. Such is life; best to not dwell on such things. If you don’t know you’re missing something, then you’re not really missing it, right?

 

The sun was high overhead when O'Neill and Teal'c came in from walking the perimeter for the third time since their on-planet arrival that morning. O’Neill was old enough to be getting tired of all this legwork, even though it was a good cure for the bad case of fidgets he would have once there was nothing to do. This time around, they had set up a series of motion detectors in a rough square about fifty yards away from the ruins. If anything bigger than a pussycat broke through the laser beams linking the sensor units together, SG-1 was going to get 110 decibels of warning hooter notifying them that they weren’t alone.

Carter had re-appropriated Jackson's camera and was taking a second series of close-up shots of the alien script, occasionally reaching out and brushing away accumulated dirt and debris. Jackson had taken several rubbings of different lines of the engravings and was sitting cross-legged with them in his lap examining them closely. A furrowed brow indicated a lack of success. 

Teal'c came to stand by them, arms crossed, staff leaning against his chest, while O'Neill went to the rover and began rummaging through the storage cases of MREs in search of something resembling either cake or anything else he wasn’t supposed to have. Teal'c studied the inscription intently for several minutes. His scrutiny did not go unnoticed.

"Recognize anything?," Carter asked hopefully. After another moment's examination, he nodded and gestured at a section of the writing with his staff.

"This," he said, "appears to be an admonishment that the most suitable females to choose for mates are those with large backsides." Carter's eyes went wide in astonishment, and Teal’c suddenly had Jackson's full attention. He continued, pointing to an adjacent block of writing. "And this is an instruction that silicone enhancements are not appropriate for bodies, but should be used exclusively for children's toys." Jackson stared at him, open-mouthed. "The writer's preference for large healthy females is repeated several times throughout, as is his insistence on the veracity of his statements," he concluded with a staff wave. 

Carter was vacillating between shock and amazement, and hadn't decided how to respond when O'Neill broke in.

"Teal'c, buddy, better give it up," he advised. "I don't think she knows Sir Mix-A-Lot." He pulled his knife to slice open a box, then went back to digging through the container, all the while grumbling under his breath about the Air Force's culinary attitudes. Understanding slowly spread across Carter's face. Jackson broke into a laugh.

"Teal'c, did you just make a joke?," she asked in surprise. He gave her a slight bow.

"Indeed," he rumbled in his deep bass. "Now I shall assist Colonel O'Neill in his search for cake." 

They were interrupted by O'Neill hammering on the side of the rover with the butt of his knife.

"Kiddies!," he shouted, "Come and get it! Your choice: grilled mexican chicken, chili and macaroni, or Captain Carter's personal favorite, buttered ham slices." 

The way he took pleasure in their suffering was unseemly. Carter shuddered at the thought of the horror lurking in the sealed mylar pouches, and offered up an unenthusiastic, “Yummm.” O'Neill noticed.

"Look on the bright side, Carter. There's always the ever-popular cracker pack in every bag." 

She scowled, thinking he was starting to sound more and more like an MRE salesman.

"No mac and cheese?," Jackson asked.

"None to be seen," O'Neill confessed.

"Good."

Teal'c took the chili mac with no comment, and they ate lunch in the shade of the ruins. 

O’Neill, feeling uncomfortable with the silence, broached the topic of weaponry, always a popular subject. The SGC was planning to phase out the venerable MP5s for SG team use, and were investigating replacement options. Their MP5s were an awesome close-quarter weapons platform, but they had been in use since the 1960s. Recon teams like SG1 had repeatedly found themselves in situations where the MP5’s 9mm round simply wasn’t beefy enough to get the job done. 

Rumors were floating around that Heckler and Koch’s other offering, the MP7, was under consideration. It fired a 4.6mm bullet that, while smaller, moved a lot faster, and packed a heckuva wallop. The leading candidate, however, looked like the FN P90. It was chambered for the slightly larger 5.7mm round that would give them armor-piercing capabilities. Handy, considering their chief opponents at the moment were Jaffa, who tended to be armored. 

O’Neill had used both MP7 and P90, and tended to favor the P90. He found its highly-touted ergonomics to be an ergonomic pain in the ass, but he liked the bigger cartridge, higher cyclic rate of fire, and the fact that it dropped expended brass out of the bottom of the weapon. 

During shooting engagements, he preferred to stay as far to the right as possible, so he could keep an eye on his team as well as the enemy force. That put Carter to his immediate left, and she had a tendency to spray hot brass all over him. Every time he gently confronted her on the subject, she would be embarrassed, give him a sheepish grin and promise to try to do better next time. It was impossible to be angry at her when she was sheepish, but that was scant consolation when he was jumping around, trying to dig a red-hot shell casing out of his collar while Jaffa were shooting energy blasts at him. 

Teal’c also liked the stubby bullpup design. He had been fully checked out and range qualified with every man-portable weapon at the SGC, up to and including the evil-looking seven-barrelled minigun that everyone greatly desired to shoot, but no one wanted to lug around. Despite his familiarity with the Tau’ri’s weapons, he stubbornly kept his staff weapon. General Hammond had once briefly considered ordering him to stop using the weapon, but its presence did make a certain amount of tactical sense. 

The first few seconds of any engagement were always the most critical, and Teal’c’s staff weapon had oftentimes sowed sufficient confusion among the opposing Jaffa to give SG1 a moment or two of free reign. A moment or two of confusion on a battlefield could equate to one hell of a lot of carnage for the bad guys, so the decision was made to let the matter slide. Teal’c was essentially free to use whatever weapon he chose. O’Neill was perfectly fine with that. In order to equal the destructive power of the staff blaster, he would need an M203 grenade launcher at the very least, and those were nowhere near as accurate as Teal’c was with his staff.

 

Lunch was almost wrapped up when they had their first visitor. They had grown so accustomed to the silence and emptiness of this world that when a small brown furball hopped onto the rock where Carter was seated and squeaked a tiny ‘skree’ at her, she nearly jumped out of her skin. Teal’c had levelled his staff blaster, and O’Neill, caught five yards away from a gun, had pulled his knife, before either was conscious of making a move. 

Between Carter’s involuntary jump back, and the weapons of destruction being aimed at the tiny creature, Jackson was reduced almost to tears with laughter. Recovering her composure somewhat, Carter gave him a look that clearly communicated her desire for something heavy to fall on him, then bent to examine the animal more closely.

It looked, for all in the world, like a two-legged chipmunk. Its nose, it is true, was a little longer than its terrestrial analog, and its tail was bare like a rat’s tail, but the similarities were uncanny otherwise. It was covered with short brown fur, and had the distinctive three-banded stripe running from forehead, down the back, and ending at the base of the tail, that was characteristic of the eastern chipmunk native to North America. The whole ball of fur would have fit comfortably in her hand with room left over.

It seemed to be looking at her as intently as she was looking at it. She knelt to get a closer look, and the creature gave off series of skree-ing chirps and hopped backwards. It didn’t run away, she noticed, it had simply moved to maintain a consistent distance. Carter shifted abruptly to one side, and the animal moved accordingly, chittering at her the whole time.

O’Neill, Teal’c, and Jackson gathered around to get a better look. The creature appeared to watch them, hopping around the rock, and chirping at each in turn. Looking around, Jackson spied the remains of Carter’s lunch, and fished a finger-sized sliver of cracker out of the MRE pouch. He tentatively held the tidbit out to the small animal, who seemed to be interested. At any rate, it hopped closer and sniffed the cracker. 

“Daniel,” O’Neill warned, “we know nothing about that whatever-it-is. Stay back. God only knows what kind of diseases, or fleas, or whatever it could have.” 

Jackson set the cracker on the rock, and the creature hopped over and began devouring it.

“You are in soooo much trouble,” Carter said. 

“What do you mean?,” he blinked, taken aback at the suggestion.

“What happens when you feed a stray?,” O’Neill asked.

“I don’t think there’s much chance of it following me home,” the younger man retorted. “Should we try to catch it?”

“With what?,” O’Neill spat back, beginning to get frustrated. “Last I checked the SGC didn’t have any varmint traps.”

“I don’t know,” Jackson conceded, thinking furiously. “Maybe one of the MRE crates?,” he offered weakly.

“Sorry, Daniel,” O’Neill said shaking his head. “I left my coonskin cap at home. You know how many safety protocols there are about bringing unknown life forms back to Earth.”

Jackson looked helplessly at Carter, who could only shrug and shake her head. So many of the situations they faced offworld were inconceivable to the paper-pushers who wrote Air Force regs, but their current situation was directly and specifically addressed by three whole sections in the SGC’s reg book. Daniel knew damned good and well what he was proposing was strictly forbidden; what she couldn’t figure out was why he would suggest such a thing.

“C’mon, Daniel,” O’Neill said, “it’s the only living thing on this planet that’s not a plant, and you want to steal it?”

“I think not,” Teal’c rumbled, pointing at the top of an adjoining stone. There was another of the furry animals there.

“And here,” Carter chimed in, pointing at the pinnacle of one of the stone platforms, where two more of the creatures were looking over the edge at them.

“Holy moly,” said O’Neill in mock fear. “This is starting to look like the Little Big Horn all over again.”

“O.K., Custer, I get the point,” Jackson admitted.

“Look,” O’Neill temporized, “if it makes you feel any better, I’ll make you a deal: if one of them tries to steal an artifact, then you can try to catch it. But only the guilty one, and I will require proof.” Jackson muttered anatomical impossibilities under his breath in answer.

“Speaking of artifacts, maybe we should be getting back to work,” Carter suggested helpfully. Jackson nodded agreement, and with a last glance at the skree-ing animal, turned to the ruins, where he was shortly thereafter lost in contemplation of their ancient-ness. 

O’Neill let out a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding in, and went to check on the motion sensors, wondering the whole time what the hell had just happened. Jackson could be a bit obsessive at times, but this whole incident had been very uncharacteristic of him.

Teal’c remained behind, studying the creatures. They were unlike anything he had seen before, and he felt a distinct uneasiness about them.

“I do not like those… things,” he observed to no one in particular, before shouldering his staff and following the retreating form of O’Neill. 

Carter watched her three companions walk away, and performed the mental equivalent of scratching her head. This planet was beginning to give her a distinctly uneasy feeling, and she would not be sorry to put it in her rear-view mirror. In the meantime, there was work to be done. She went to join Daniel.

 

They worked throughout the long afternoon, with the sun beating down, bright and illuminating, but not seeming to generate enough heat to offset the gentle breeze. All in all, this was a damned pleasant spot to be in. Between the weather, the ruins, and being with his closest friends, Jackson was as happy as a pig in mud. 

Carter, he noticed, was a slightly different story. She worked well enough, and he knew beyond doubt that she was definitely smarter than he was. Time and again, under the most difficult circumstances, she had proven that. Her mind was a razor. Given the realities of the stargate program, there wasn’t going to be a wide field for the speculative archaeology he had indulged in, whereas her field of theoretical astrophysics had metaphorically blasted off like an equally metaphorical rocket ship from a 1930s pulp magazine. What had put an end to his subspecialization had boosted hers beyond measure, and while he had felt a slight pang of jealousy at the realization, he was very happy for her both academically and personally. She was, however, rather distracted at the moment, he noticed. 

In truth, it wasn’t a full-time distraction. It was only when O’Neill and Teal’c chanced to wander past. And then, when Teal’c went to the baggage rover to look for something, it was only when O’Neill chanced to wander past. Jackson smiled inwardly. The attraction between O’Neill and Carter had not surprised him in the least. What had surprised him was their utter refusal to acknowledge it in any way, but he chalked that up to the military mindset. 

Their dear Uncle Sam was under the misapprehension that personal involvement had deleterious effects on soldiers’ readiness and efficiency. Being a student of history, Jackson knew that for the absolute and utter crap that it was. He knew the stories of the Vikings, and the ancient pre-Han Chinese and how in both cultures the women had fought alongside their men and been just as ferocious, just as deadly, and possibly even more feared than the men. He remembered studying the ancient Greek city-state of Thebes, and the army unit known as the Sacred Band, composed entirely of pairs of lovers, and how even the Spartans, scourge of the ancient world, had given them a wide berth. If the Air Force refused to learn from history, he mused, they were doomed to repeat it.

What was really wild, he went on thinking, was how O’Neill and Carter being around each other made them both better. Neither wanted the other to see anything other than their absolute best. It didn’t hurt that they were two of the sharpest, most competent people he had ever met. If the military hierarchy had any sense at all, they would be encouraging them, instead of tamping down their feelings. He made a mental note to talk to O’Neill about it when the chance came up. Sam would be easier to talk to, but he felt the crux of the matter would ultimately lie with O’Neill. 

He shoo-ed a few more of the furry creatures out of his way. Their numbers had steadily increased as the day went on. In truth, they were getting to be a bit of a pain in the neck. He had to be increasingly careful to not step on or drop something on one of them. Jackson found himself hoping their numbers didn’t keep increasing indefinitely. 

Rummaging through his pack, he found his small folding shovel and began the laborious task of carefully digging a shallow trench at the base of one wall. Examination of soil strata might give him a better feel for the complex’s age, and the accumulated dirt and debris at the base of walls was typically a gold mine for artifacts. Three minutes later he was so thoroughly engrossed in his task that it would have taken a box of hand grenades to get his attention. His companions and their social interactions were a million miles away from his mind. 

 

O’Neill was bored. The science members of the team were busy with science-ey things. He and Teal’c had reset the motion sensors so they wouldn’t be set off by the small furry animals, and that was about the extent of what they had to distract themselves with. If left his own devices, it was likely he would have continued exploring, seen if he could break through the thick forest and see if anything was on the other side. 

Duty, however, demanded at least one of them stay in close proximity to the gate and at least in theory, provide protection for Carter and Jackson. He smirked at that. Of all the people he knew, Carter was one of the least likely to need protecting. Jackson… well, Jackson was another story.

He and Teal’c climbed to the top of the first stone platform. The stone steps leading up to it were more or less intact, and more or less stable, though there were small tendrils of grit and dust that drifted from between the stones intermittently. That wasn’t so bad, O’Neill reflected, considering how old they were.

The view from the top of the platform wasn’t as spectacular as he’d hoped. The clearing was just that: a clearing. There were no signs of habitation, cultivation, or any of the other -ations they usually looked for. The forest was a solid wall ringing the complex of ruins, and appeared to be equally dense in all directions. There were a few mighty trees that shouldered their way above their neighbors, but for the most part, it was a uniform green canopy stretching as far as the eye could see.

With a sigh, he sat on the edge of the platform, feet dangling off into space, and resigned himself to watching Carter and Jackson work. Not that that was an entirely unpleasant prospect. It was enjoyable watching Jackson work when he got really enthusiastic about a project. They habitually butted heads over every conceivable disagreement, but he had a great affection for the younger man. His energy and excitement could be infectious, especially in situations like this where no one was in danger. That had customarily been the exception, not the rule.

As for watching Carter, well, it went without saying that he could watch her for hours on end.

He heard Teal’c shift uneasily, and looked up at him.

“Hey, buddy,” O’Neill said. “They’re going to be at this for the rest of the day. May as well take a load off and get comfortable.” A confused look let him know an inevitable explanation was due.

“Take a load off of what?,” Teal’c asked.

“Your feet,” O’Neill replied, remembering just in time to not refer to them as ‘dogs’, which would have necessitated a second explanation. “They’ve been working since we got here, so give them a break.”

“That is not true, O’Neill,” came the reply. “There was, in fact, a lengthy break for lunch.” 

He had no reply to that, so instead he began picking up loose pieces of gravel and tossing them at the little furry things.

“It is unwise to antagonize them needlessly,” Teal’c said after a few minutes of this. 

A sudden thought occurred to O’Neill, and he began tossing gravel at Jackson instead. The archaeologist was confused at first, and gave the structure a panicked once-over, hoping he hadn’t done something to make it start to fall apart. A few more bits of gravel hitting his back made him turn around, and as soon as he saw O’Neill he understood the source of his torment. He favored the colonel with as much of a disgusted look as he could muster.

“Crazy question, Daniel,” O’Neill began. “Is there any chance our new friends,” a lazy wave took in a large swathe of the small animals, “might be the Furlings?” 

Jackson looked at him like O’Neill had lobsters crawling out of his ears.

“Jack, are you serious, or are you screwing with me?” 

O’Neill gave him an elaborate shrug.

“You’re the expert. You tell me,” he replied.

Carter had watched the exchange with a growing grin. She wasn’t sure if O’Neill was jerking Jackson’s chain or not; he was wearing his sunglasses, so she couldn’t get a read on him. Every time he was messing with someone on purpose, the skin around his eyes would crinkle.

“Are you seriously suggesting the fourth race, in alliance with the Asgard, the Nox and the Ancients, were some kind of space hamsters? That’s pretty far out there, Jack, even for you.”

“They could be some sort of hive mind,” Carter offered helpfully, interested in spite of herself. Jackson wasn’t about to shoot Carter down as cavalierly as he had O’Neill, if for no other reason than he knew she was being serious, whereas he still strongly suspected O’Neill was messing with him.

“I think it’s still pretty unlikely,” he replied after a moment’s thought. “They haven’t made any attempt to communicate, even on a rudimentary level. They don’t show any signs of any kind of social order or interact among themselves. We haven’t seen anything indicative of any sort of technology, aside from these ruins, which I’m 100 percent certain they don’t have anything to do with. Nope, not buying it, not today.”

She made a face and shrugged, not the least bit offended at her idea being dismissed. Jackson glanced back at O’Neill.

“You’re really fixated on this Furling thing,” he remarked. “Why?”

“There was an alliance of four great races,” O’Neill began, slowly. “The Nox we all met together; the Ancients have apparently departed or died out, so no one will ever meet them; Carter was the first to meet the Asgard. I haven’t been the first to meet anybody. She’s one up on me. I find that irksome, Daniel. Irksome.”

Carter had ducked her head to hide a smile, but couldn’t suppress a snort of laughter. Teal’c favored O’Neill with a sideways squint, but said nothing. Jackson resumed his earlier look of incredulity.

“Jack, at this point, I’m hoping you’re screwing with me. No scientific curiousity, no human interest, just ego?”

“Never underestimate my ego, Daniel,” O’Neill replied archly.


	3. Three

Chapter 3  
In which Daniel Jackson gets manhandled

 

Late in the day, and completely by accident, they made a gruesome discovery. After having stewed in his metaphorical juices for most of the afternoon keeping a fruitless guard over the ruins, O’Neill went to ask Jackson and Carter when they were going to wrap things up for the day. 

Carter had cleared the dirt away from the small shallow trench she had dug at the base of the platform face. She had been curious if any of the inscriptions or carvings had extended below the ground level, which could have indicated anything from sedimentary deposits to anything else Daniel could think of. This was definitely Jackson’s area of expertise, and it amused her to think that she was there to provide muscle while he did the brainwork. She smirked at the notion, then wondered if that meant she was picking up any of O’Neill’s bad sarcastic habits.

O’Neill could see Jackson sunk deep in thought, and decided not to bother him. Carter was kneeling by a shallow hole next to the wall, and appeared to be staring off into space with a dopey grin on her face. 

“Carter,” he said, to no response, as she continued to stare off into space.

“Carter?,” he repeated, walking closer, and still getting no response. He stretched out his hand to give her a shake.

“CARTER!,” he said again, more forcefully, poking her shoulder.

THAT got a response.

Still kneeling, she whipped around, left arm swinging into a defensive block, right hand instinctively reaching for the knife at her belt. She had it half drawn before she realized it was O’Neill who had startled her. For his part, O’Neill was taken completely off guard by her reaction, and took an involuntary step back. He felt something give underfoot, and felt more than heard a soft crunch. 

With a sinking feeling, he took another step back and looked. Sure enough, he had stepped on one of the chipmunk-things, and squashed it flat. He felt vaguely sick to his stomach. Under the right circumstances, he could machine-gun people all day long without a qualm, but killing animals had always made him queasy. The sequel to his actions made him more queasy still. 

As the furry animal chirrup-ed and skree-ed its last breath, all of the other creatures in the vicinity gathered into a rough ring around it. The moment it was still, they charged, tearing the dead animal to shreds and devouring it on the spot.

“Good God,” Carter whispered under her breath, reverently.

“Holy Smorgasboard, Batman,” O’Neill said under his, hovering between fascination and revulsion. 

“Merde,” added Jackson, brushing dirt off his knees. He had snapped out of his reverie as Carter turned on O’Neill and had witnessed the ensuing events with disgust.

“I told you I did not like those creatures,” Teal’c said in a self-satisfied tone.

The entire episode had not taken ten seconds from start to finish. The small furry animals were remarkably efficient; the only remains of their devoured comrade were a few smears of blood and a tiny piece of skull. Everything else, from his whiskers to his toenails was gone. O’Neill wasn’t sure if he was worried or relieved that their blood was red.

“Daniel,” he ventured softly, “if I change my mind and let you try to catch one, I think I know what to use for bait.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Jackson replied. “I’ve suddenly and unaccountably lost interest.”

“That may be the most disgusting thing we’ve seen since… ever,” Carter offered.

“Certainly up near the top of the list, along with people getting snakes shoved in their heads, or being torn apart by black holes,” O’Neill agreed.

“During the time I was First Prime of Apophis, the most commons forms of death came from the Goa’uld ribbon devices and staff blasts,” Teal’c said. “In our travels together, I have come to appreciate the many ways the galaxy has to dispatch the unwary. I am in your debt.”

“Don’t get so excited, buddy,” O’Neill shot back. “You make me feel like I’m aiding and abetting a juvenile delinquent.” He turned his attention back to Jackson.

“You about ready to wrap things up for today?” 

The younger man seemed inclined to argue, but accepted his fate when Carter pointed out the day was almost done. The sun stood scarcely more than a hand’s breadth above the horizon. There was, at most, perhaps an hour and a half of usable daylight left. With a grudging shrug, he gave in.

As Jackson and Carter packed their scant gear and did their best to clean up a little, O’Neill and Teal’c set themselves to the task of gathering dead wood from the edge of the forest. Lucky for them, the forest hadn’t been foraged for firewood in a little over ten million years, so there was an abundance. Camping, O’Neill reminded Teal’c loudly and at great length, really wasn’t camping without a campfire. He briefly considered scavenging appropriate-sized rocks so he could build a gin-u-wine cowboy-approved rock-ringed campfire, but suspected that Daniel might have an aneurism if he started grabbing random stones this close to the ruined complex. Best to let that sleeping dog lie.

Carter and Jackson got their tools cleaned up and stowed on the rover, then turned their attention to getting themselves cleaned up. It was a cardinal rule in both of their disciplines that you took good care of your equipment, made sure it was in good order and safely stored away before looking after your own needs. In Daniel’s domain, where likely as not he might be in Outer Mongolia on a dig, it would be impossible to replace something lost or broken in the field. 

Carter’s sphere wasn’t so dire, and yet paradoxically, could be even more so. In her workshop at the SGC, she always had the luxury of replacing wayward parts, but it was where those wayward parts had ended up that caused the most concern. In her mind’s eye, she could still recall the safety films viewed at the Academy, where fighter jets had been lost because of misplaced lunch boxes and turbines stripped due to leather work gloves being left in jet intakes. Her favorite, if it could be called that, had been the suburban neighborhood that had a load of dummy practice bombs dropped on it when a mechanic’s lost wrench had shorted out the fire control computer on a ground-attack aircraft. Her own research was magnitudes more explosive. When working with something as literally earth-shattering as pure, refined naquadah, no chances were taken, never ever ever.

Shooing a few more of the chipmunk-like animals away, so as to not inadvertently reenact O’Neill’s previous discovery, they popped the lid on one of the five gallon jerry cans, and poured water into a small, shallow basin that was usually used for holding or cleaning smaller artifacts. Due to the exceptionally fine weather, they hadn’t broken a sweat all day, and thanks to wearing gloves, most of the dirt they had accumulated was on their knees or backsides. Still, there were the stray facial soil smudges from the occasional ill-considered itch or rub, plus they had stirred up a fair amount of very fine dust. 

Carter went first, demurely scooping up a double handful of water and scrubbing her face as well as she could, then running wet fingers through her hair. Jackson followed suit, then produced a small cloth and began painstakingly cleaning his ears. He noticed her questioning look.

“Out in the field, ears are dirt magnets. After a couple of days, you try to wash them and they turn into mudpies,” he explained.

“Makes sense,” she replied. “Where did you get the washrag?”

“Oh, it was in the little box that came with my pistol,” he said offhandedly. She sighed in exasperation.  
“You realize you’re cleaning your ears with a gun cleaning kit, right?”

“It’s for cleaning, isn’t it?,” he retorted defensively. Carter gave up and turned her attention back to the basin, doing her best to scrub her neck. The sounds of grunts and heavy footsteps and a strange swishing sound echoed from behind the ruined structure, and a moment later, O’Neill and Teal’c staggered into view, laboriously dragging about twenty feet of fallen tree trunk.

“Ambitious,” she muttered under her breath, eyeing their sweaty faces as they dropped the trunk near the rover, and puffed for breath.

“It’s o.k. to be impressed, Captain,” O’Neill huffed, hands on his knees.

“I was just trying to figure out which one of you was Paul Bunyan and which was Babe the blue ox,” she shot back. “Don’t you think that might be a bit much?”

“Oh, don’t be that way, Carter,” he said. “Now, look at it with a woodsmans’ eye.”

They walked around the trunk, giving it a quick once-over, and Carter and Jackson started to get the distinct impression the O’Neill was messing with them again.

“So?,” Jackson asked. “It’s a big, dead tree. Too big to burn all at once, unless you want to start a grass fire. I’m guessing the SGC keeps the chainsaws right next to the varmint traps, so you’re out of luck there.”

“Quite correct, Daniel,” O’Neill answered. “But if you’ll look closely, you’ll see most of the branches are small in diameter. We can cut those off to build our fire, and still have this lovely organic free-range tree trunk to sit on, because I, for one, have no intention of having a dusty bum. 

 

SG-1 was as relaxed as they got in the field. Dinner was a cordial affair around a crackling fire, or as cordial as lukewarm MREs could be. O’Neill had saved the micro-sized bottle of Tabasco sauce from his condiment packet at lunch, and had spread it over ham slices that had the imitation butter carefully washed off. As a meal, it left a little to be desired, but wasn’t terrible, as long as he didn’t think about it being ham.

Jackson and Carter detailed their discoveries, and O’Neill and Teal’c briefly outlined their forest exploration. Shooing away the omnipresent mutant chipmunks, they settled in and began to make themselves comfortable. 

O’Neill’s dusty-bum protestations aside, he stretched out on the ground and leaned up against “his” log, toes nearly in the painstakingly kindled fire, and set himself to absorb as many good vibes as possible. Teal’c had begun re-lacing his boots with new laces, but after a few moments he stopped, and appeared to be deep in thought, gazing into the heart of the fire. Carter was busy writing notes in her field notebook, her meticulously neat handwriting crawling across the pages like friendly black spiders holding hands. Jackson was carefully rolling the sheets of rubbings he had made during the day and storing them in his rucksack, humming softly to himself. 

It was as quiet and peaceful a scene as they had experienced together. The sun slid below the horizon with a wave of fluorescent pink that faded to brilliant orange before oozing into a welter of hot red that gave way to the deep purple of nautical twilight. O’Neill tossed another handful of wood into the fire. The blazing pyre shifted, sending a trail of sparks twisting into the night sky, where they competed for attention with the gradually emerging stars. It was going to be a gorgeous evening. Life was good.

Jackson, finished stowing his archaeological gear, was speaking quietly with Teal’c, who had resumed his boot-lacing endeavors. O’Neill sidled a little closer to Carter and solicitously cleared his throat. She glanced up from her writing.

“Sir?” 

He shifted to a slightly more comfortable position. He started to speak, reconsidered, then took a deep breath and jumped in.

“Carter, I’ve been thinking about something you said during the briefing.”

Her look invited elaboration.

“You mentioned the possibility this planet had been terraformed. I’ve been thinking: this world just feels all wrong, like somebody tried to build a world but wasn’t entirely sure what they were doing, so they just guessed at a lot of things.” She grinned at his characterization. She had felt the same way.

“For all our familiarity with other planets and what we’ve come to expect with gate travel, this is still an alien world, sir. The life-sustaining parameters set by the gate builders may have been met, but there can still be wild variation from world to world. Frankly, I’m surprised this is the first world we’ve come across that has felt so alien.”

“So, you’ve felt it, too?,” he asked.

“Oh, definitely, sir,” she said with a slight tremor. “It still gives me the willies.”

“So, back to terraforming,” he prompted gently.

“Well, terraforming isn’t really a question of difficulty, sir. Anyone with enough time and power could terraform a world. It’s a question of scale: Who is going to be able to operate on a planet-wide scale.”

It was his turn to invite elaboration with a look.

“Short answer, sir, is nobody we know. The Asgard have the appropriate level of technology, but nothing we’ve learned about them indicates they would have any interest in that kind of manipulation. The Goa’uld might have the technology, but wouldn’t ever be able to work together long enough to do it. I don’t think anyone would even dream of the Nox trying to terraform a planet. Plus, if Daniel’s right about the age of these ruins, you’re looking at millions of years ago. Who knows how many highly advanced races could have risen and disappeared in that time frame?” 

“Hmph,” he replied. 

One of the problems with life in the SGC was the dearth of solid answers about a lot of things. On the mission to Abydos, he had envisioned many of humanity’s nagging questions being answered. Instead, more had been added, and the pace of new questions being added to those questions was only increasing. 

Jackson had risen from his place on the log and assumed what Carter jokingly referred to as his ‘professor’ pose. He was discoursing to Teal’c on some topic, and getting more excited and animated as he went on. Teal’c was clearly enjoying the subject, as evidenced by the look of rapt attention on his face.

“Daniel,” O’Neill interrupted, “whatcha doin’?” 

Jackson looked around and blinked, clearly thrown off by O’Neill’s intrusion.

“Oh, ahh, I was telling Teal’c the story of the Deer Woman,” he verbally stumbled, still visibly jolted by losing his train of thought.

“Deer Woman,” O’Neill repeated. “Don’t believe we’ve met. Do tell.”

“She’s a Native American fertility spirit, protector of young maidens, that sort of thing,” Jackson finally replied.

“That sounds pretty benign,” O’Neill commented. 

“She protects young maidens by trampling promiscuous young men to death,” came the rejoinder. Carter blinked in surprise.

“Wow,” she said. “Sure could have used some of that when I was at the Academy.”

“Still sounds pretty tame,” O’Neill told her with a shrug. “So, what else does she do, Daniel?”

“Well, umm, she loves to dance, will join in communal dances whenever she can, and ahh, she’s also a harbinger of death.” O’Neill’s raised eyebrows invited additional commentary. 

Whatever else Jackson would have said was lost for all eternity, when the motion sensors erupted with 110 decibels of hooting, honking, screeching warning.

The furry creatures reacted to the alarm, becoming agitated and starting to mill around. There were more of them than there had been at sunset. A lot more. Like, twice as many, even in the wavering, uncertain light of the fire.

In a heartbeat, SG-1 was on their feet, O’Neill and Carter racking the action of their MP5s, Teal’c opening the aperture and energizing the power cell of his staff, all three alert for any intruders. Jackson glanced around but didn’t see anything to get nervous about yet. O’Neill dug out his flashlight and played the beam around the perimeter, looking for trouble. Teal’c remotely reset the sensor net. Nothing was in sight, except eyes shining in the light of O’Neill’s flashlight. Far too many for his comfort.

“False alarm?,” he asked no one in particular.

“Looks like,” Carter agreed. “I’ve never heard of a Mark II giving a false alarm, but I guess anything is possible.”

Teal’c made no answer, just closed the aperture on his staff and powered the weapon down. This planet and its furry occupants left him with an evil feeling, which impression hadn’t been helped by Jackson’s choice of source material. He rumbled uneasily, deep in his chest. He would not be at ease until they were safely off this planet.

They had just begun to settle back into their comfortable spots when the alarm blared out its warning again. 

“Not gonna buy two false alarms in a row, are you, Captain?,” O'Neill asked.

“Not a chance, sir,” Carter replied. “Something’s out there.”

All four team members had their flashlights out now, stabbing fingers of white into the inky darkness, as they grouped in a tight cluster back to back. Uncountable numbers of ruby sparks ringed them round, as the flashlights’ beams reflected from animals’ eyes. One after another, they rattled off vocal confirmation, all sectors were clear, visual confirmation, no hostiles. This time, no one lowered a weapon. Even Dr. Jackson had drawn his pistol and was pointing it uncertainly in a generally southern direction.

“Carter,” O’Neill grated, “talk to me.”

“Mark II sensor package has an effective range of 150 meters, sir. Whatever set it off should be well within visual range.”

“Teal’c, what’s the status on the sensor net?”

 

“The sensor in front of Captain Carter has been activated,” he rumbled, double-checking the display on the tiny control pad as he silenced the alarm.

“This sector is clear, sir,” she rebutted. “I have visual all the way to the treeline.”

“Any chance we’re dealing with an invisible OPFOR, Captain?,” he asked.

“Sir?,” she challenged.

“You know, like in the movie THE FORBIDDEN PLANET. Invisible. Can’t see it,” he replied, trying to be helpful.

“Ummm, that’s a movie, sir. That’s not real,” she said gently in an attempt to keep her cool. “Besides, that was black-and-white, and everyone knows black-and-white movies were crap.” This was not the time for her CO to play old-movie-trivia.

“No,” he disagreed, “it was color, though it was so long ago you could be excused for thinking it was black-and-white. Still I take offense at your evaluation of black-and-white movies. What about IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE? THE MALTESE FALCON? Hell, you just dismissed the entire Marx Brothers’ body of work.”

“But still, sir, invisible?,” she replied.

“Carter, with my own eyes, I have seen a Nox with ferns in his hair make a floating city disappear. At this point, nothing is off the table.” 

“Understood, sir,” she responded.

“O’Neill,” Teal’c interjected, “something is moving in this sector. It is between the sensor and the treeline.” 

His three companions turned to cover the Jaffa’s quadrant.

It was a vague, hazy something that was moving around. Even with the combined power of four flashlights totalling almost a million candlepower trained on it, the indefinable something refused to render itself visibly distinct. 

It was moving closer; at fifty yards out, it engulfed the sensor array. The beams from the flashlights picked out a ruby spark in the nebulous form, and all four team members stiffened in recognition. The shadowy mass resolved itself into a screeching, seething horde of the small furry creatures they had been seeing since lunch. Literally millions upon millions in a tidal wave of scree-ing murderous alien chipmunks, moving in an inexorable tide at the ruins, the campfire, and the four astonished members of SG-1.

O’Neill was the first to recognize their peril. The swarm of wildlife was showing no signs of abating or changing direction, and they were in serious danger of being overrun.

“Move it!,” he barked. “Up to the platforms.”

Carter and Teal’c took off at a run, almost as soon as the order was given. Jackson stood goggle-eyed, rooted in place, watching the furry swells of an ocean of cannibalistic rodents come closer, like a bird mesmerized by a snake.

“Daniel!,” O’Neill roared. When the younger man failed to move, he grabbed a handful of BDU jacket and yanked him along. 

Teal’c and Carter rounded the remains of a ruined wall and slid to halt, confronted by another wave of mutant chipmunks coming from the direction of the ruins. O’Neill and the still-in-shock Jackson barrelled into them from behind, almost knocking the group down like a bunch of olive-drab bowling pins. The area from where they stood to the staircase leading to the platforms was a solid carpet of chittering, scree-ing animals.

Teal’c only hesitated a moment before thumbing his staff to life and firing a series of blasts along the base of the nearest wall. The ancient stone cracked and groaned before shifting and falling almost at their feet to form a perfect walkway to the stairs.

Jackson was speechless at the havoc wrought to the ruins. He was motionless, pale as a ghost, and could only manage to make a ”guh-guh-guh,” sound.

“Good job, T,” O’Neill spat out. “Now move your asses.” 

The furry creatures around them were going off their collective nut at the smell of blood in the air from their crushed comrades. Carter and Teal’c rushed across the section of fallen wall and up the stairs, with O’Neill pulling a unresisting Jackson behind. He slipped the safety off of his MP5 as they trundled over the crushed and crumbled stone. The furry animals, temporarily pushed back, regrouped through sheer strength of numbers and began to flow behind them like a hairy tsunami. 

This was going to get messy, he reflected to himself.

Teal'c and Carter hustled up the stairs and across the first platform, skidding onto the catwalk. O'Neill had a fistful of Jackson's jacket and was shoving the younger man's unresisting form forward, while sending an occasional squirt of 9mm fire onto the churning mass of creatures behind them. The muzzle flashes combined with the stabbing fingers of light from their flashlights turned the night into a surreal nightmare. 

As they reached the top of the stairs, the mewling, skree-ing mass was practically at their heels, and O'Neill knew he didn't have the firepower to hold them at bay. Reaching into a vest pocket, he dug out a grenade. Handing his MP5 to Jackson, he pulled the pin and tossed the grenade toward the top of the staircase, then tackled the archaeologist to the ground.

"DOWN!," he yelled in the direction of Carter and Teal'c, and a moment later the concussion of an explosion showered them all with a spray of dirt and rock fragments. Carter and Teal'c were caught off guard by the warning and explosion and never had so much as time to duck, which was just as well. With a rumbling groan the staircase collapsed. The catwalk they were standing on began to shift, fissures and cracks appearing and spreading before their eyes like lightning.

They were near the halfway point of the walkway, their momentum having carried them in the direction of the second platform. In a flash, Teal'c realized they would never have time to retrace their steps to the first platform. He scooped Carter up under one arm with a little effort as if she had been a rag doll, and sprinted for the second platform, racing the widening cracks in the stone. He felt the catwalk begin to sink underfoot, and realizing they would never make it, bodily threw her the remaining distance to the platform. He had coiled to attempt a jump when the walkway gave way beneath him.

Carter rolled onto the flagstones of the platform and popped to her feet, spitting dust and wiping dirt from her eyes. Teal'c was nowhere in sight and the first platform was obscured in a dust cloud. A moment later she heard the earth-shaking thud of an impact, followed by a gasp and the sound of Teal'c bellowing her name. She ran to the edge of the platform and saw the Jaffa hanging in midair, grasping the splintered edge of the catwalk with one hand and his staff with the other.

There was no way she could haul him up by brute force. She looked around and saw a crumbled upright that looked as if it had been part of a bannister. Carter moved quickly, sliding the carry strap of her MP5 to its maximum length and looping it around the weathered stone. Hoping it would hold, and not send them both tumbling down, she lunged back to the edge, reaching for Teal'c's hand.

"Take the staff," he grunted. She grabbed the weapon, and slid it across the platform as he reached up with his suddenly free hand and grabbed hers. She could never have supported him, as his thickly muscled body scaled somewhere over three hundred pounds, but she didn't have to. He had a hold of her, and the strap was supporting them both, leaving her feeling a little like an accordion being stretched out to an uncomfortable length. He grasped her for only a moment, then was scrambling over the edge and the safety of the platform. They collapsed together, gasping for breath, listening to the blood-maddened skree-skree-skree of the countless creatures beneath them.

"Captain Carter, I am in your debt," Teal'c finally managed to rasp. 

She patted his shoulder, drained by the sudden violent burst of exertion. Their quiet, relaxing night by the campfire had evaporated rather suddenly.

"Don't worry about it," she managed to pant. "I think I still owe you about four more saves. You o.k.?" 

He nodded, then got to his feet, still breathing heavily, and retrieved his staff. O'Neill's voice crackled over the radio.

"Carter? Status?" She toggled the mike switch and replied.

"Teal’c and I had a bit of a close call, but we're o.k., sir. Is Daniel with you?"

"He's with me," came the staticky reply. 

She stood, mechanically readjusting the MP5’s sling, and moving the weapon out of the way. With a rasp of velcro, she and Teal'c pulled their flashlights from their tactical vests and took a quick look around the platform. It was a rough square, perhaps fifteen feet to a side. The elevated walkway had completely collapsed, isolating them. They could see O'Neill's and Jackson's lights stabbing through the still dusty air of the first platform.

"We're trapped, sir," she radioed. "The walkway is gone."

"We're in the same boat, Captain. The stairs are gone," he replied. 

"All things being equal, that may not be such a bad thing," Jackson interjected, pointing downward. The undulating carpet of small furry animals was throbbing in a decidedly angry looking fashion. The regret O'Neill felt at blowing up the stairs was gradually being replaced by a sense of relief that he had done so. The creatures' agitation was increasing, driven by the scent of blood from those creatures crushed beneath the collapsed catwalk or blown up with the staircase. 

SG1 had been trapped many times before on different missions, but for the first time, O'Neill was glad about it.

The words took a moment to sink in. They were trapped.


	4. Four

Chapter Four  
In which Captain Carter thinks  
And Dr. Jackson argues

 

Jackson was resting on his back, hands folded on his stomach, crossed feet resting on the eroded stone remains of what had once been a bannister. His gaze was locked on the heavens.

"It's so easy to get caught up going in and out of gates, exploring other worlds, being in fear for your life, you forget how big and beautiful the galaxy is," he said. 

O'Neill noted the dreamy faraway look on the young man's face with slight disgust. 

"Are ya feelin' good about yourself, Danny Boy?," he asked in a terrible imitation of an Irish accent.

"This may be kind of a tight spot," Jackson replied, "but we've been in worse, and today turned out to not be such a bad day. We're all safe, and no one’s going to bed hungry.”

"And now, if only we had a drop of something to keep away the dew," O'Neill commented, still working on the accent. 

Jackson decided to dig back at the older man.

"Well, Jack, I didn't see any Guinness on the rover," he commented.

"Ya really know how to hit where it hurts, don't ya, Daniel?"

"I learned from the best," Jackson said, making a finger gun and pointing it at O'Neill, who decided there was no point pursuing the topic any further.

"Now look at those two," O’Neill changed the subject, pointing at the other platform. "I bet you anything, right about now, Teal'c is kicking himself that he got stuck up here. And I bet Carter is completely uptight because she can't figure out a way to get back to the gate."

He checked his watch. It was almost 20:00 hours. Time to be getting these poor children to bed. Growing bodies needed lots of rest, after all.

"All right, laddie," he said, reviving the horrible accent, "here's what we're gonna do."

 

Carter hugged her knees to her chest and relaxed back against the crumbled remains of the rock wall. She looked up, seeing the galactic center from an entirely unaccustomed direction. The milky way was spread across half the night sky, making a stunning backdrop to this planet's three moons, all of which were barely visible as thin crescents. 

It felt so good to unwind, to take a deep breath, to let the hard-assed Captain Carter melt into the background, and for just a little while, just be plain old Sam Carter. For a little space, this one evening, she was once again a starry-eyed 30-ish year old woman, and her worries were no more complex than that. 

"On my homeworld, evenings like this were considered optimum for the wooing of young maidens," Teal'c said. Carter smiled at that. She idly wondered what Jaffa courtship rituals might be like. Given the robust nature of Teal'c's sturdy people, that might not bear close examination. Broken bones might not be out of the question.

"Is that not the case with the Tau'ri?," he asked.

"Oh," she equivocated, "I think that's pretty much a universal constant." 

The thought didn't bother her near much as it might have not all that long ago. The Jaffa had been a wonderful ally, steadfast in his support of the Tau'ri, but they were definitely a society apart. The intervening years since their enslavement had wrought considerable change, culturally speaking, and what had once been one people were now definitely two in sentiment.   
But then, a change had come in her. Or more accurately, it was more of a shift than a change. Thoughts and behaviours that had seemed hopelessly alien at the beginning of their association had become accepted, even expected in certain situations, and were missed when not present.

She had changed in more ways than just that. In the recent past, she had felt the need to constantly prove herself, to outdo all the other personnel in any field of expertise, to show that Captain Samantha Carter was the one indispensable person in the entire SGC. It had been a foolish overreaction, a response to her feelings of inadequacy when with confronted officers and enlisted personnel who had been in place since she had been in grade school. As time passed, she had learned the value of letting others do their task while she focussed on hers, to not hinder other servicemen and women in doing the jobs their Uncle Sam expected them to do. 

She rocked back, studying the milky way. The astrophysicist in her could categorize the stars by type and magnitude, could discern what stage of development they were in, could figure how much of their lifespan was left. But plain old Sam Carter could push all that aside and gaze with wonder at what was before her. 

The non-scientific, non-military part of Carter that was taking a break felt young again. She was 20... she was 15. A great burden was lifted from her. The Air Force and responsibility was literally a thousand light-years away. She felt free to gaze in awe at the heavens, wondering how she had become so jaded that she could take such breathtaking sights for granted. Possibly she should be bending her mind to the task of getting out of here, but for now, there was nothing to ponder, nothing to do, except simply BE.

Teal'c also was awash in memory. There were so many things he had given up when he had joined O’Neill in resisting the Goa’uld on that fateful day. Many of them were obvious: the life of privilege he had left behind; the feeling of accomplishment at being named First Prime, Warrior of Warriors; the surge of pride at learning his firstborn was a son, fitted to carry on the traditions of honor and service to their god. 

There were others which had not been so apparent, at least not at first.

The sharp tang of the air on Chulak. The comfortable feeling of being in his own home, surrounded by his own possessions and his own kin, as opposed to the barracks at the SGC, where all was alien to him, and borrowed to boot. Being able to eat his native food. Walking out the door and meeting someone who spoke his own language. 

Then there were intangibles by the truckload. 

The Tau’ri were genuinely good people, freehanded and generous to a fault. But they were not Jaffa. Their customs, their traditions, their very way of thinking was at odds with his previous life. He was honest enough to admit there were many aspects of their culture worth adopting, but there were times he felt concern that he might lose himself entirely if he was not careful.

The current situation was a perfect example. A Goa’uld or Jaffa confronted with similar circumstances would have thought nothing of blasting a path to the stargate regardless of how many of these creatures were destroyed. The total obliteration of all of them would not have weighed heavily on the conscience of either, and that was assuming the Goa’uld had consciences. SG-1’s entrapment had been a consequence of their unwillingness to lauch total annihilation on a species they were unfamiliar with. In the not so distant past, he would have thought that a weakness, but he had come to appreciate the wisdom in their way of thinking. For now all he could do was be patient and admire the breathtaking view of the night sky, for despite the millennia of their enslavement, the warlike Jaffa still held a deep love for nature. 

Carter felt the romantic tug Teal'c had been talking about. The part of her that was still an awestruck young girl, looking out at the cosmos, was firmly in control. The part of her that had busted her butt at the Air Force Academy, had burned the midnight oil churning out a doctoral thesis, had commanded the respect of researchers thirty years her senior, suddenly took backseat. 

As strange as it might seem coming from someone who explored the farthest reaches of the galaxy, she wanted more out of life. She was conscious of a void in her soul, an empty spot where something definitely belonged. As stupid as it seemed to her professional self, she wanted to be swept off her feet, to meet Prince Charming, to live Happily Ever After. To be all crazy stupid reckless in love. Would that be so terrible? Was that too much to ask? Was that even possible given her career choice?

She was honest enough to admit to herself that many of those juvenile fantasies were beginning to give way. Life had been teaching her all sorts of difficult and otherwise unthinkable lessons the last few years: some of her hopes and dreams she had given up, some had been forcibly wrenched away from her. Captain Sam and Scientist Sam and Sweet Sam were all beginning to converge on a single point. As uncomfortable as it made her, that point was currently above her rank, wearing a silver eagle on the lapel of his dress uniform. 

However comfortable or uncomfortable it was, she wasn’t going to give up; it wasn't her nature. It wasn’t as though she could switch her feelings off. Science had taught her that seemingly insurmountable obstacles could be overcome, sometimes by something as simple as changing one’s point of view. So it would prove, she hoped, in this instance. What she wanted, she would find a way to achieve. After all, she had her father’s stubbornness in spades.

Current situation aside, the night was intoxicating. The stars, the moons, the cool breeze, the exotic location, the recently escaped danger all lent an air of mystery that was pretty damned compelling. It felt like anything could happen. She wondered if this was how early explorers had felt. The idea struck her as kind of silly, given the circumstances, but maybe a little silliness was called for. 

To reinforce the notion, O'Neill's voice came drifting across the intervening space. He was singing "Home on the Range," if such a racket could truly be called singing.

"Is Colonel O'Neill in distress?," asked Teal'c, rising to his feet. "Is this some signal to come to his aid?" He shifted his staff blaster into a ready position, and peered into the darkness.

"No," Carter replied. "This is a signal that the Colonel is enjoying himself." 

Jackson had joined in, singing a third step down to the Colonel's melody line. Teal'c was convinced something had gone terribly wrong and the two were in mortal peril. He could think of no other reason for the vocal display.

"I shall attempt to aid O'Neill."

"No," she replied, putting a gently restraining hand on his arm. "Leave them be."

"AND THE SKIES ARE NOT CLOUDY ALL DAYYYY," concluded O'Neill. 

Jackson joined in with what could legitimately be considered the worst coyote impression of all time.

"Very nice, sir," she shouted across the intervening distance. "I liked it, but Teal'c was worried you were in danger." A burst of static came from the 2-way. 

"Only from boredom, Captain. Only from boredom." 

Sunk deep in introspection, she hadn't had time to be bored.

"Carter, go ahead and and bed down for the night," O'Neill ordered. "Teal'c and Daniel, take first watch. Wake us up at 1 o'clock." 

Five hours was a pretty good stretch of sleep.

"And you'd damn better well have pancakes ready by then," he finished.

"Roger that, Colonel," she acknowledged, followed by concurrent agreement from the other team members. A crackle of squelch was the only reply. 

There wasn't much to do in the way of preparing for bed. She rolled her boonie hat into a ball and experimented with using it as a pillow. No good, much too small. Maybe the ruck would be better.

As O'Neill was beginning his own experiments in bedding, Jackson eyed him speculatively.

"Jack," he asked slowly, "has anyone ever suggested that the O'Neill clan may have a congenital screw loose?"

"Many times," O'Neill mumbled. "We're all like that on my father's side." 

Jackson saw the opening and immediately pounced.

"And how is your father's side?," he asked.

"Much better, thanks for asking," O'Neill completed the joke. 

Jackson made a face.

"Well, that takes care of the Marx Brothers. Do you want to do a little Abbott and Costello next, or just go to sleep?," he deadpanned. 

O'Neill didn't bother correcting him that it had been the Thin Man, and not the Marx Brothers. He gave Daniel credit for trying.

"Sleep," he ordered, then remembered Carter and Teal'c.

"Good night Carter, goodnight John Boy," he radioed.

"Good night, sir," she replied.

"Who is John Boy?," Teal'c asked in confusion. 

"Don't worry, Teal'c," she reassured him. "Everything is alright."

"Just wait 'til tomorrow," O'Neill mumbled to himself, then promptly slid off to sleep.

 

Jackson sat cross-legged atop his stone platform. The silence of the night was broken only by the quiet susurration of millions of tiny footfalls whispering through the darkness. There was the barest hint of a breeze, just enough to keep the air fresh, not enough to make the evening uncomfortably cool.

The blazing spectacle of the Milky Way splashed across half the sky could only hold his attention for so long. His mind soon turned to the events of today, prior to SG-1 being cornered by zillions of cannibalistic chipmunks.

This was an exciting site. It is true, he didn’t know appreciably more than he had upon arrival, but the things he had learned here had only served to whet his appetite. He had begun to have serious second doubts about the age of this complex. The geological soil strata had shown a different story than he had surmised, and he was starting to think he had underguessed the age of this structure by a considerable margin. Hopefully, tomorrow he would be able to continue his survey and definitively answer the question. With Carter’s help, he could get this wrapped up pretty quickly.

Carter.

Jackson had felt a strong attraction to Carter from the moment they first met. They both had strong academic backgrounds and were recognized as cutting edge in their respective disciplines. Carter's enthusiasm in her field of expertise was equally matched by Jackson's in his. That enthusiasm had been incredibly attractive. 

He had felt guilty, as though he was betraying the memory of his missing wife. It had taken him time to realize his feelings were a response to Carter's naturally affectionate nature and sweet, sympathetic spirit, and were not romantic in nature. He had come to place great value on their friendship, and she was one of very few people he trusted implicitly. They might not always agree, but he appreciated her point of view, knew it was genuine, and knew her heart was in the right place. 

Carter had always been there for him, in ways the others couldn't. They understood each other on an almost intuitive level. She was the truest friend one could hope for, and was level-headed enough to yank him back down to earth when his head got too high in the clouds. It shamed him to think of the times he had taken her for granted, or even worse, brushed her off. It hurt to admit, but there had been times he had done exactly that. The comparison may not have done wonders to help his self-esteem, but he was honest enough to admit to himself when he didn’t measure up to his principles. Her happiness was of great importance to him, and if he had to help it along by giving it a little nudge, then so be it.

Apparently, the little nudge was going to involve what would likely be an uncomfortable conversation with Jack O'Neill. With a sigh, he figuratively girded his loins, and prepared to meet the beast in its own lair. He shook O’Neill awake, and allowed him several minutes to get up and around and get the cobwebs of sleep out of his brain. The last thing he wanted was for O’Neill to only have some sort of half-remembered hazy recollection of this conversation. He brought the colonel up to speed on what had happened during his watch, which amounted to essentially nothing, then took a deep breath.

"Jack," he asked quietly, "what are you going to do about Sam?" 

O'Neill fished out his canteen, gave it an experimental shake to gauge its fullness, and said, "Well, if we make it back... no, WHEN we make it back, I suppose it’s about time I started the paperwork to make her a major."

"That's not exactly what I meant," Jackson replied slowly. "I meant what are you going to do about Sam... and you."

"Sam... and me," O'Neill swished the words around his mouth like mouthwash. The bitter kind, not the minty kind. 

"Daniel," he finally replied, "there is no 'Sam and me'. I don't know what gave you that idea, but I think you might have misinterpreted something."

"I don't think so," Jackson rebutted. "I'm not quite as flaky as you think I am. I've seen the way you look at each other sometimes when you think no one's watching. I know that look. I used to give it to Shaare, and she used to give it to me." 

O’Neill unscrewed the canteen lid.

“I don’t recall the two of you being very shy about PDA. At least not like you’re accusing me of being with my not-girlfriend,” he commented dryly.

“Don’t be such an ass,” Jackson shot back, starting to get a little heated.

“Daniel, do you have any idea how many regulations we would be breaking if Carter and I were… ummm, romantically entangled? Any notion how deep the crap would be?”

“Don’t throw regs at me, Jack,” Jackson fired back, heat turning into a slowly simmering anger. “This is Sam we’re talking about. She’s fought for you, stood up for you, gone back for you when no one else thought there was a chance you were alive. Every time something happens to you, she practically turns herself inside out with worry.”

“I had no idea,” O’Neill admitted. Jackson shrugged.

“Of course you didn’t. Sam’s too much of a pro to let it show; only the people who are really close to the two of you would know. Everyone else would think she was just being really cranky.” Jackson started to cool off a little, disarmed by the other man’s frankness. “She has given so much for all of us, and she has asked so little in return. There are times, honestly, her behavior makes me ashamed of myself. My point is that she deserves better. Hell, for that matter you deserve better.”

“Air Force,” O’Neill replied with a shrug.

“Then they're stupid,” came Jackson’s bitter rejoinder. O’Neill smiled an ironic smile.

“From your lips to God’s ears, Daniel,” he said, upending the canteen and taking a drink.

“If they were taking this seriously, they’d buy you two a wedding cake and pay for your honeymoon.” O’Neill nearly bit the top off his canteen in surprise.

“WHAT?!?”

“Think about it, Jack. If two members of your flagship exploratory team, who have saved the world a half-dozen times and are on a first name basis with all your alien allies, decide they want to play house and start making babies together, you don’t quote regs at them. You encourage them to have as many offspring as possible, and then you get on your knees at night and pray to Jesus or anyone else who will listen that at least some of those offspring will be interested in joining the SGC. The galactico-political ramifications of you and Sam having children would be game-changing. If nothing else, think what your kids would be like, given their gene pool.” Jackson started to heat up again. 

“Good God, Daniel,” O’Neill started to interject, before Jackson cut him off once more.

“Things aren’t always going to be like this, Jack. At some point, the stargate will become public knowledge. When it does, the people of Earth will find out what’s been going on for the past few years. For a lot of the galaxy, the human face of Earth has been you and Sam. Teal’c and I have been involved, but we’ve never been able to speak on behalf of the planet like the two of you have. For most of our off world allies, you two ARE Earth. Any children the two of you might have would wield tremendous political clout.”

“Well...,” O’Neill temporized, desperately wanting to change the subject, but having nowhere to go. He despised politics.

“You can’t hide from this Jack,” Daniel pushed. “It’s not going to go away. The best you can hope for is to forget about it for a while.”

“I get the feeling you’re not going to let me do that,” O’Neill grumbled. Jackson decided to try another route.

“Are you ashamed of Sam?,” he asked. THAT got a reaction.

“Boy, you say something like that again, you’re gonna get your mouth washed out with soap.” 

O’Neill seemed slightly embarrassed by the violence of his own reaction. He went on in a more subdued tone. 

“Don’t misunderstand, Carter’s got her faults, but she’s as good a person as there is. Only a complete bonehead could miss that.”

“But she’s not worthy of you,” Jackson prodded.

It was O’Neill’s turn to start getting heated up. 

“Daniel,” he said with a brittle edge to his voice, “you’re really pushing my buttons. You might want to think long and hard before you say anything else.”

“Way to dodge the question, Jack,” Jackson needled. O’Neill sighed, apparently giving up.

“No, I don’t think she’s not worthy of me. If anything, it’s probably the other way around. In any case, it’s a moot point. Neither of us can do anything as matters stand. One of us would have to quit the Air Force. Carter’s too important to the program; hell, she’s too important to the whole damn planet.” He gave Jackson a venomous look. “And if I can say so without sounding too arrogant, I’m pretty damned important to the program, too.”

“I’m not arguing the point,” Jackson admitted. “I’m more interested in finding a solution. There’s got to be a way around this if we put our minds to it.”

“So who else knows?,” O’Neill asked.

“You. Me. Sam. Teal’c. Hammond. Probably Fraiser; I think Sam confides in her a lot more than anyone else,” Jackson replied. O’Neill shuddered.

“Dear God,” he muttered under his breath.

“What are you grumbling about?,” Jackson wanted to know.

“Just thinking that my superior officer and personal doctor are privy to the possibility of me being in a potentially career-ending relationship. I don’t even want to know what anyone else thinks about this,” O’Neill said.

“Why not?”

“You all must be really disappointed.” Jackson’s jaw dropped.

“Disappointed?,” he repeated. “Jack, I can’t speak for the others, but I’m probably closer to the two of you than I am anyone else on the planet. The idea that you and Sam could be happy together makes me… well, happy. It hurts me that you would think I’d be disappointed.”

“I’m used to disappointing people,” O’Neill said, picking up small pieces of gravel and tossing them over the edge of the platform. “I’ve done all this before, Daniel. I’m not really sure I’ve got it in me to go through it again.” He suddenly felt old in ways that had nothing to do with calendars.

“Sara?,” Jackson asked gently. 

O’Neill nodded, still flipping gravel into the darkness.

“Jack, you told me, in your own words, the reason things fell apart with Sara was because of how you responded to what happened. You wouldn’t open up to her. This is the same situation all over again. You’re going to have to open up whether you want to or not.”

“And what if something does happen?,” O’Neill asked, suddenly angry. “What if everything goes the way you think it will? What if something happens to Carter? God, Daniel, that nearly killed me last time. I can’t go through that again.”

“You’re already going through it, Jack,” Jackson replied softly. “It’s already killing you; it’s just killing you by inches instead of yards.” 

There was some truth to that, O’Neill had to admit. 

“This has been just as tough for Sam as it has for you.”

“It would have been nice if she’d said something about it,” O’Neill grumbled. 

Jackson gave him a look that clearly said ‘You cannot possibly be that stupid.’

“Sam won’t ever push,” Jackson said instead. “If anything happens, it will be because you made it happen.” 

“You realize that even with the best intentions, there’s no guarantee things will work out. If everything turns out sunshine and lollipops we may find out six months down the road that we really don’t like each other. What happens to the team then? This whole situation could go sideways so fast we’d never know what happened,” O’Neill commented. 

“No kidding,” Jackson shot back. “You’ve both got enough issues to keep a legion of psychiatrists busy for life.”

“Might be best to let sleeping dogs lie,” O’Neill suggested. “Things aren’t so bad right now. We’ve both got our careers, and there’s always the future to look forward to.”

“There are no guarantees for the future,” Jackson reminded him, frustration building again. “These furry things might eat us, we could die in a gate accident going home, or be captured and executed by the Goa’uld two weeks from next Tuesday. How would you feel if something happened to one or the other of you and you’d never been honest with each other about your feelings? You want to carry that around, too? For Pete’s sake, don’t put it off.”

“Daniel, this is hardly the time or place,” O’Neill objected. “We’ve got other things going on right now. Maybe later. Maybe, like you said, the bad guys solve the problem for us. In any case, the mission comes first; all this other stuff has to take a back seat.”

“GODDAMMIT, JACK!,” Jackson was beside himself, so frustrated he was almost in tears. He grabbed the older man by the BDU front and tried to shake him.

“When you get to the end of your life, you’re not going to regret missing one more trip through the gate, or not going on one more mission. THAT,” he stabbed his finger into the darkness, indicating Carter’s present location, “THAT is going to be your regret, knowing you pissed away what should have been the best years of your life with the best person you’ve ever known. And for what? You get killed, and in two weeks they have someone else out here doing your job. And what’s Sam supposed to do then? Play good soldier and carry on? Act like the past few years haven’t happened? You’re not that much of a bastard, Jack.”

O’Neill coldly removed Jackson’s hand from his lapel.

“Daniel,” he began in a warning tone when he was cut off again.

“No, you’ll damned well listen this time. Everyone else you know either has to salute you, or you salute them. Well, I don’t salute anyone, so shut up. You have lived with unimaginable regret for so long already because of your son. It is stupid to add more because of this, and you may be a complete ass, but you’re not stupid.”

O’Neill held up a hand to placate the younger man, but Jackson was having none of it.

“Haven’t you learned anything from what we’ve done? What good is all of this if you don’t have someone to share it with?” 

Jackson’s anger crumbled into remembrance, his face fell, and O’Neill saw his eyes were bright with tears.

“Trust me, Jack, I know,” he finished quietly, unconsciously echoing Ernest Littlefield’s words to him, long ago. If there was anyone unconditionally qualified to talk about the subject, it was Jackson. He had carried the burden of searching for his wife for so long, it was easy to forget that had been his original motivation for joining the SGC.

As uncomfortable as O’Neill was with this whole conversation, he could see how moved Jackson was, and just couldn’t find it in himself to be angry with the younger man. He gave Jackson a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

“Daniel, we’ve been friends for a long time, now. I know you mean well, and I’m sincerely glad you care enough to yell at me about it. I know where you’re coming from, and I promise I will think about what you’ve said,” he said reassuringly. Jackson seemed somewhat mollified. “But,” O’Neill continued, “if you ever bring this up again, I WILL shoot you.”

At the sound of Jackson’s first angry outburst, Teal’c had shaken Carter awake, and the two had listened to the ensuing argument in horrified fascination. They were too far away to hear words, but the tone of voice was enough to let them know this was serious. In their situation, possibly deadly serious. Carter toggled the two-way.

“Sir, is everything okay?” 

A moment later, O’Neill’s reply crackled through the static.

“We’re playing charades, Captain. Daniel just did Jack Nicholson from ‘A Few Good Men’. Did a good job, don’t ya think?”

“Yes, sir,” she replied dubiously, not believing for a second that was what had happened, but not being willing to buck her CO. If he felt like not sharing what was going on, it was his prerogative. Hopefully, she thought, it was something as simple as typical male posturing over sports teams.

A minute later, she recalled Jackson didn’t follow sports.

“Go ahead and change watch, Captain,” O’Neill radioed.

“Roger that, sir,” she responded.

Jackson hunched against a crumbled pylon and pulled his BDU jacket over him. He felt relieved that he had tried. He didn’t know if this would bear any fruit, but he believed he had done his best. He drifted off to sleep, dreaming of children running around the SGC, hoping they would have both of their parents’ best qualities.

O’Neill sat on a rock, stewing. This had been a hell of a thing to get hit with first thing on waking up. The worst part was that he knew Jackson was right. The whatever it was between Carter and himself was growing, not shrinking. At some point it would have to be addressed. 

He suddenly wished there was something he could use to build a fire. There was at least five hours until daylight. Five hours that were going to be more or less filled with introspection, and male introspection was generally helped along by the presence of a campfire.

He watched the stars wheel overhead. The moons sank towards the horizon. He could just barely see Carter through the gloom, and several times he heard her moving around. He would almost toggle the radio to talk to her, then would stop, and decide it probably wasn’t a good idea, given his present state of mind.

His mental stew came to a boil several times through the night. He was alternately angry at himself, for falling for Carter; angry at her, for being so irresistibly adorable; angry at the Air Force, for making things so damnably difficult; angry at the furry things, for trapping them here and making this introspective interlude happen; angry at Daniel because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut; angry at the Goa’uld, just on general principles; and finally, angry at the Ancients, for building the stargate network, and making this whole Maelstrom of Complete and Total Suck possible. 

The anger faded, replaced by frustration, and eventually regret. He couldn’t let this happen. As CO of SG-1, he had to be sharp, had to be decisive. However much it might irritate Daniel, the mission really DID come first. 

It was time to noodle a way out of this mess.


	5. Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone has to pee. You were warned.
> 
> It's no big deal, like the children's book title says, "EVERYBODY POOPS."
> 
> Things get blown up.  
> And shot.

Chapter 5  
In which Carter does science stuff

 

O’Neill sat quietly, watching the sky fade from rhinestone-studded obsidian to the pearly opal that was the forerunner of dawn. Late in his watch an idea had occurred to him, one that had left him waiting for sunrise with the metaphorical equivalent of itchy feet. 

As the sky lightened, he looked to the other stone platform to see what his comrades were up to. Teal’c was sitting cross legged, in much the same position as O’Neill. He assumed the Jaffa was in the meditative state that took the place of sleep for the symbiote-bearing members of his race. Carter was lying prone on her stomach. He was about to toggle the radio and give her a dressing down for sleeping on watch, when she shifted, and he could see she had been looking through the scope on her MP5. 

He couldn’t fathom what she could have found so interesting, but he was relieved she had not been derelict in her duty, and felt a little ashamed that he had jumped to such a conclusion. He knew good and well she would be one of the last people to do such a thing. The thought stung all the more, considering Jackson’s words of the night before. Sam Carter would be dead long before she willingly did something to disappoint him.

He rose and walked to the opposite edge of the platform, facing toward the forest. He looked down at the mass of creatures below, barely discernible in the predawn gloom. 

“Buenos dias, chupas,” he greeted them in his best Spanish, before unbuttoning his fly and urinating on the lot. 

He heard Jackson’s subdued, “Wow, didn’t expect to wake up to that,” from the side of the platform he had just quitted. 

He finished with a flourish worthy of his most poetically-inclined Irish ancestors, and adjusted his accoutrements. The furry carpet below took no notice of either his actions or words, which hurt O’Neill’s pride, just the slightest little bit.

The sun broke the horizon. Pearlescent gray gave way to fiery orange with a suddenness that made him think they were in this world’s tropical zone. Only in Earth’s tropics did the sun rise and set so rapidly, and if anything, sunrise on this planet was even more speedy still. It was time to put his idea into action. 

He reached for the radio, but Carter beat him to it. She had caught a glimpse of the tail end of his morning routine, and it reminded her that Nature’s Call was just as clear to her, if not so easily answered.

“Uhhh, sir,” she began, not really sure how to phrase this. At his inquiring look, she pointedly stared at each of her three teammates in turn, and gave him an imploring look before nodding her head in the direction of the forest. She could almost watch the thoughts chase each other across his mind before it clicked and he understood.

“Right, Captain,” he radioed back. Abandoning the radio, he boomed out in his best scoutmaster voice, “ALL RIGHT, CAMPERS, EVERYBODY ON THEIR FEET. SHAKE OUT THOSE COBWEBS BOYS, OR THE GIRLS WILL BEAT US TO THE CHOW HALL.”

Carter wasn't sure how to take being referred to in the plural, but as long as it had the desired effect, she didn’t care. O’Neill bellowed on.

“IF THE MALE MEMBERS OF THE TOUR GROUP WILL DIRECT YOUR ATTENTION TO THE SOUTH, YOU WILL SEE THE FINEST EXAMPLE OF A NORTHERN LARCH TREE FOR FIVE HUNDRED MILES IN ANY DIRECTION.” 

He extolled the virtues of the large tree, truly a giant among the forest, for a full five minutes, describing the higher points of its lineage in great detail, extolling the virtues of its foliage and the toughness of its bark, buying Carter as much time as he could without being obvious about it. She deserved as much leeway as they could give her, while still preserving as much dignity as possible under the circumstances. 

Her business didn’t consume all that much more time than anyone else’s, but she let him ramble on without interruption. It was either a complete line of B.S., or he knew far more about forestry than she had guessed, but either way, it was a touching gesture.

About the time O’Neill was running short of arboreal information, he risked a glance in her direction, to see Carter following his every word with sarcastically rapt attention, nodding sagely as he rattled on with fact after fact, and feigning surprised interest. He made a great show of checking his watch before finishing with, “AND THAT CONCLUDES THIS MORNING’S PRESENTATION ON THE NORTHERN LARCH. IF YOU WILL RETURN AT NOON, MY COLLEAGUE, DR. JACKSON, WILL TELL YOU MANY INTERESTING THINGS ABOUT TREE SLOTHS AND THEIR DIETARY HABITS.”

The three other members of SG-1 favored O’Neill with a polite golf clap for his efforts. The whole team knew what was going on, but out of politeness, pretended to fall for the subterfuge every time it was tried. O’Neill toggled the radio.

“All right, boys and girl, I have had… an idea.” 

He briefly outlined what he had in mind, which was really quite simple. Carter, Teal’c, and Jackson would lay down cover fire while he jumped off the platform and got to the rover. Once onboard, he could drive to the platforms, they could climb down, and all ride to the gate together. It might be a tad crowded, as the rover was designed for transporting baggage and not passengers, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

He made sure his MP5 was set to single shot before handing it to Jackson with a meaningful look.

“I’d prefer to not get shot this early in the day, Daniel,” he remarked casually. Jackson frowned in reply.

“You did update your will before we left, right? Because if you didn’t, Siler’s going to be whining about your VHS collection, and I’m not giving him a thing.” 

O’Neill dug a grenade out of one of his tactical vest’s pockets and stepped to the platform’s edge. The rover wasn’t more than ten feet from the base of the platform, but the ground was thickly covered with the small furry animals. While he could kill people without compunction, he recoiled at the idea of killing animals, but recoiled even more at the thought of being trapped here. He gave Teal’c and Carter a questioning look, and got a pair of reassuring nods in reply. Showtime.

He pulled the pin, let the spoon fly off, and heard the hammer hit the cap, igniting the fuse. There was no reason to wait, and always the off chance that the little old lady who cut the fuses at the grenade factory might have cut this one a bit short, so he expertly dropped the smoking grenade at the foot of the wall with a snarky, “Eight ball in the corner pocket,” before ducking back into the platform’s protection. 

The ground shook. Dirt, fur, and stone chips flew in all directions, and he heard grenade fragments PING! off the rover’s hull. Without waiting for the dust to clear, he dropped over the side of the platform, almost fell on the uneven ground, and leaped to the rover. He did his best to ignore the crunching of small furry bodies underfoot. Thankfully, there were no live creatures within three meters; his grenade had wrought bloody havoc on them, concussion killing those missed by steel fragments.

He reached the control panel at the rover’s aft control station as the animals began to regroup and come after him. He heard Teal’c’s staff fire at the same instant Carter squirted off a burst of 9mm fire that chewed up the dirt five feet to his left. Jackson dutifully opened up with individual pops to his right.

He grabbed the oversized pistol grip controller and hit the power button. Nothing happened. He tried to engage the forward drive wheels. Again, nothing. In desperation, he tried honking the horn. A third nothing. Carter hit the radio.

“Check the control cable linkage, sir. They can come loose pretty easy. It’s directly underneath the cowling below you.”

O’Neill went to one knee and peered under the rover. Where he should have seen row upon row of neatly bundled wire looms was nothing but a few shredded strands of bare copper. The rover wasn’t going anywhere without a pretty serious overhaul. 

“Goddamn squirrels chewed up the wiring,” he radioed back. “Any other options?”

“GET OUT OF THERE, SIR!,” she shouted, eschewing the two-way and switching to a two handed grip on her MP5. She shifted position and emptied her weapon’s magazine into the pulsating furry carpet, reloading without a thought.

The creatures were edging closer, despite the withering fire being poured into them. Carter, having an awkward angle, had to stop shooting, for fear of hitting him. Jackson’s single shots weren’t doing much to stem the tide. Teal’c’s staff was taking a fearsome toll, but even if he was the Jaffa version of Davy Crockett, O’Neill saw he couldn’t hold them back much longer. He made a snap decision, hopped to his feet, and started untabbing the cargo netting and yanking containers off the rover.

“DANIEL!,” he roared, and tossed a case of MREs up to Jackson, who caught it with a “WHUFF!” of impact. A second cargo case followed the first, and then one of the five gallon water cans. This last had to be painstakingly lifted as high as possible, and Jackson had to lie prone to reach down and grab it. 

O’Neill was in serious danger of being overrun. Teal’c had to stop shooting; the creatures were too close to O’Neill. He coiled and sprang for the platform’s lip. His mighty leap was nowhere near enough to reach the edge, but it was enough to reach Jackson’s outstretched hand, just barely. He hung there for just a moment, feet braced against the wall, gasping for breath, when Daniel pointed at his feet. One of the furry animals had attached itself to his left boot and was enthusiastically trying to gnaw its way through the leather. He kicked into the wall, and felt a sickening crunch, then Jackson was pulling him up over the edge of the platform.

“It’s a good thing for us both that you’re a stringy old man,” Jackson panted. O’Neill didn’t say anything, just patted the younger man’s shoulder while gasping for breath. He had faced death on myriad occasions in almost every form possible, but the thought of being eaten filled him with a special kind of revulsion.

“Are you ok, sir?,” Carter’s voice crackled over the two-way.

Still panting, O’Neill circled his thumb and forefinger and gave her the universal ‘A-OK’ sign before rolling back on the cool stone.

“Tell Teal’c he gets a gold star for the day,” he finally managed to rasp into the radio.

“Do you not honor the families of fallen soldiers with such a display?,” Teal’c asked Carter in confusion. She grinned at him.

“Yes, but in this case, it’s also how the young are rewarded for excellent performance.”

“I am honored, Colonel,” Teal’c’s formal, if staticky, reply came through the radio.

“And I am alive,” O’Neill responded, “and I am not having any more ideas until after breakfast.” 

It was, he reflected, a hell of a way to start the day.

 

After a minute to catch their breath, O’Neill and Jackson opened the storage cases and got to work. It was one of O’Neill’s quirks of personality that he refused to go off world without certain items experience had taught him were invaluable. In this instance, paracord. He sifted through the case until he found the thousand foot reel of cord he had stashed there.

With Jackson’s assistance, he unspooled a length sufficient to span the distance between the platforms, plus a little extra. While Jackson tied off one end to the weathered stump of a bannister support, O’Neill searched for and found a softball-sized chunk of stone and tied the other end around it in the same fashion as a bow goes around a gift box. He gave the package an experimental shake, and finding it held together better than he had any right to expect, tossed it to the outstretched hands of Teal’c. 

As the hulking Jaffa slipped the cord off the stone and tied it to the muzzle of his staff blaster, Carter unfastened the largest pouch of her MOLLE gear, and slid the retaining pin through the snap ring of a carabiner. With the carabiner clipped over the paracord, Teal’c could send the MOLLE pouch sliding to the other platform just by raising the muzzle of his staff. Lowering it would send the pouch zipping back to them.

Using this crude but effective method, Carter and Teal’c quickly had their canteens and expended ammunition replenished. Then the topic of breakfast came up. 

One of O’Neill’s carefully stashed contraband items turned out to be an eight-pack of breakfast cereals in individually portioned miniature boxes. Such departures from standard U.S. Air Force fare were frowned upon, but not strictly forbidden. Individual COs were allowed quite a bit of leeway in such matters, and O’Neill firmly believed that such harmless, homey touches were good morale boosters, Besides, an eight-pack split among four team members made for very easy math, and he enjoyed easy things. 

To the surprise of no one, Carter opted for both boxes of Special K. Jackson selected the Honey Nut Cheerios, allowing Teal’c to satisfy his love of Golden Grahams. O’Neill, being the last to choose, was stuck with what was left. A quart of shelf-stable milk would stretch exactly far enough to take care of all eight cereal boxes, and fortunately, said boxes were waxed cardboard, allowing them to double as tableware, obviating the need to pack space-wasting bowls. It might not have the same zest as ice-cold milk over Froot Loops in the SGC commissary, but it wasn’t bad at all, and the morning view of the alien world made up the difference.

The brassy sunlight of early morning faded to a gentle gold that picked out highlights in some of the taller trees. Setting his arboreal line of b.s. aside, O’Neill really was taken by the beauty of parts of the forest. Some of the trees had clearly stood for hundreds, if not thousands of years: mighty, knarled, and twisted, reminding him of the ancient bristlecone pines he had seen in the Rockies.

Breakfast was starting to wrap up when Carter decided to see if O’Neill had devised any more bright ideas or if it would be up to her to pull their metaphorical bacon out of an equally metaphorical (but quite furry) fire. She hit the mike switch.

Jackson had noticed O’Neill check his watch, then do a double-take and check it again. He shook his head, and had been muttering to himself under his breath for a few minutes when Carter’s voice erupted from the two-way in a burst of static.

“Sir? We’re about done here. I don’t want to bring up a painful topic, but have you thought of another way out of here, or should I start to work on it, too?” 

It was classic Sam Carter officer-baiting, but she could have hardly expected the reaction it got. O'Neill closed his right eye and squinted at her out of the left. His voice dropped to a gravelly tone.

"When we gets back to the SGC, I'll hang your scurvy hides from the yardarm, ye mutinous dogs,” he grated. 

Carter, Teal’c and Jackson stared at him in differing stages of shock, astonishment, and surprise.

"Sam, I don't think Jack needs to watch 'Mutiny on the Bounty' any more,” Jackson broke in, hoping to forestall more of O’Neill’s worrisome outburst. She shrugged.

"I don't think that's his kind of movie," she yelled. "He's more of a 'Cutthroat Island' type."

Acting on impulse, Jackson checked the empty packaging of O'Neill's breakfast. Sure enough... He cupped his hands and shouted back to Carter.

"It looks like he had Captain Crunch for breakfast." 

She just smiled, shook her head, and spread her hands expansively, as if to say 'What else did you expect?'

"Think ye this have anythin' to do with food, do ye?," O'Neill asked in his barbarous accent.

"And as for you," he glared, pointing at Carter, "I shall tolerate no other captains today. There be room for only one.”

The other three looked at each other, hoping there was an explanation that made some kind of sense. Carter began to seriously worry she might have to relieve him of command.

"Colonel O'Neill is behaving most erratically," Teal'c observed to Carter. "Is this a likely side effect from the ultrasonic waves you mentioned?" 

She shrugged.

"Makes as much sense as anything," she replied. 

She waved to get Daniel's attention the moment O'Neill was looking the other way, then pointed at her ears until he got the idea. Moving slowly so as to not attract attention, Jackson casually walked around the platform, surreptitiously checking to see if O'Neill's earbuds were still in. They were, so he gave Carter a thumbs-up.

"If any of ye scabrous scalliwags had bothered to check the calendar," O'Neill went on, "ye might have noticed that today was the nineteenth of September."

"And that is significant why?," Jackson asked. 

O'Neill gave him a hurt look.

"It's International Talk Like A Pirate Day, Daniel," he said in annoyance. “Observed by discerning, cultured individuals around the globe.”

"You cannot possibly be serious," Jackson muttered under his breath. 

"It's International Talk Like A Pirate Day," he shouted to Carter and Teal'c. 

Carter's eyes went wide, and Teal'c adopted the puzzled look he usually wore when confronted with strange human customs. He saw Carter reach for her radio.

"You can't be serious, sir. This is a joke, right?," she asked. "A little something to lighten the mood?"

"Oh, but I am, Carter," O'Neill replied amid a burst of squelch. "And furthermore, I expect at least one 'Arrhh!' out of each of you at some point today."

"Arrhh you sure about that, sir?," she radioed back.

"Well played, Captain. Well played." 

Jackson felt his grip on reality start to bend and flex under the strain, and hoped this would all be over soon. He resisted O’Neill’s repeated entreaties with a firm ‘NO’ and a vigorous head shake. He couldn’t encourage this.

"Get a move on, matey," Carter shot back. “You... ummm, scurvy scalliwag.” Jackson shook his fists in the air and cried out.

"OH DEAR GOD, SAM! NOT YOU, TOO!"

“Blast me guts, Daniel!,” O’Neill announced loudly. “This be not something ye can fight. Give me a little ‘arrhh’, just one little teensy, tiny ‘arrhh’, and I’ll call it good.”

“aaargh,” Jackson said, with a total lack of enthusiasm.

“Close, laddie,” O’Neill responded, “but it’s more in the roof of the mouth. You’re doing it at the back of your throat. You sound like an angry chihuahua, not a pirate.”

“arrhh,” Jackson repeated, with the same lack of enthusiasm, but the correct intonation this time.

"That's the spirit, me hearties!," O'Neill answered with enthusiasm, slapping Jackson on the shoulder hard enough to rattle his teeth. "Teal'c," he called, "give it a go." 

The big Jaffa simply stared back at him, then turned to Carter.

"Captain Carter," he rumbled in his deep bass voice," I have pledged my loyalty to your world. Is Colonel O'Neill now suggesting we turn renegade? If so, despite my fondness for you all, I shall consider it my duty to immediately report this to General Hammond."

"Teal'c," she began gently, "you know how sometimes we do things that make no sense at all to you?" 

He nodded in assent. 

"This is going to be one of those times," she finished sympathetically.

“Aaaand no help from the Jaffa,” O’Neill groused. “I’m guessing Teal’c is a no-go?,” he asked Carter. She shook her head and bit her lip.

“I think I’ve convinced him you’re not actually going to go rogue, but I can’t be sure. To be honest, sir, we were all kind of convinced you’d lost your mind there for a minute.”

“Earbuds are in, Captain. No trip to crazytown for me,” he replied with as graceful a pirouette as a middle-aged man could muster, so she could see for herself that his earpieces were in place.

“All right, Carter,” he continued, “hoist the jolly roger, and then start applying that freakishly large brain of yours to some scheme to get us out of here.”

“Aye-aye, sir,” she acknowledged, a little miffed at the crack about her freakishly large brain. Her brain was perfectly normal-sized; she couldn’t help it if it worked a little better than most.

“Okay, group,” he expanded his attentions to Teal’c and Jackson. “My one and only good idea to get us out of here fell flat. Carter’s going to come up with something much better, but in the meantime, I’m throwing the floor open to any ideas, no matter how silly they may seem. We’ve got a scheduled radio check-in with Hammond at 0900. That’s not quite two hours from now. I’d like to be able to tell him something other than a sad story about how we’re stuck. Lots of sharp young minds in the room, so put ‘em to work.”

It wasn’t exactly a pep talk, but at least Daniel couldn’t gripe about him still speaking pirate.

“Sir?,” Carter radioed. He could hear the hesitancy in her voice.

“Go ahead, Carter,” he responded. “You should know by now I won’t bite.”

“Hard,” he added under his breath.

“I’m going to have to do some… umm, experiments, sir. We need more information about these things, and I, ahhh may have to… you know…,” she trailed off and the radio fell silent, but he understood what she hadn’t said.

“Roger that, Captain,” he radioed back. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but what I like less is the thought of spending the rest of my days up here. Do what you have to.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said, relief in her voice, then went on. “Sir, you know General Hammond will get us out of here no matter what.”

“I was speaking figuratively, Carter,” he said with just the slightest hint of exasperation in his tone.

“I knew that, sir. I just wanted you to know that, too.” 

O’Neill’s face twitched into an evil grin.

“You giving me a pep talk, Captain?,” he asked.

“I would never presume, Colonel.” 

This was one of those rare instances where she used his formal rank to tease him. He liked it when she did that. He may have liked it a little too much. The thought made him suddenly uncomfortable.

“Thoughtfulness is never presumptuous, Carter. Now get to work; we can’t be yakking on the radio all day.”

“Yes, sir,” she responded.

O’Neill watched her turn away and start making notes in her pocket-sized field notebook at a furious pace. This wasn’t an ideal situation, but he couldn’t think of a better group of people to face it with. Unless he could maybe add Sgt. Siler to the group.

“What was that about?,” Jackson wanted to know. O’Neill adjusted the bill of his ballcap and wiped the dust from his sunglasses.

“Daniel,” he began, “you and Carter have the same qualms of conscience. To gather intel about these things, she’s going to have to do some things which could be… er, distasteful.” The younger man looked a little squeamish.

“You don’t mean, like, dissections, or anything like that, do you?,” he asked.

“I don’t know,” O’Neill responded honestly. “It will be up to her to decide that. By me making it an order, she doesn’t have to shoulder all the guilt for whatever happens.”

“You mean the responsibility?,” Jackson asked. O’Neill smiled a grumpy smile in answer.

“No, the responsibility is mine, no matter what. I used the word guilt for a reason. Whatever happens, she’s going to feel a moral… ahh, I guess you’d call it a moral burden for what she does. By getting myself involved, I help her shoulder some of the burden.”

Jackson watched O’Neill watching Carter for a few seconds, then realized that hadn’t been Air Force Colonel Jack O’Neill talking about a subordinate officer, that had been a man talking about a woman he cared for deeply. Even if it was a purely subconscious act, she had instinctively reached out to him for comfort, and he had given it without a second’s hesitation. Apparently, they were on a much more stable footing than he had realized. At the moment, he could have kicked himself for some of the things he’d said to O’Neill last night. He took a deep breath.

“Jack, about last night…,” he started, but O’Neill held up a warning hand.

“You remember what I said about shooting you?,” he cautioned. 

Jackson waved his hands in surrender.

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry. It wasn’t my place to get involved in your business. It’s no concern of mine how you handle your affairs.” 

As soon as he said the word ‘affairs’, he winced, knowing it was possibly the worst word choice he could have made.

O’Neill wouldn’t even make eye contact with him.

“Nice, Daniel,” was all he said.


	6. Six

Chapter 6

In which Teal’c runs

O’Neill pulled his mini binoculars from a vest pocket and gave the area a quick scan. The furry creatures were spread fairly evenly across the clearing, which was something of a relief. He’d had visions of the chipmunk tsunami reappearing and steamrolling its way onto the stone platforms. He shrugged, _tsk-tsk-_ ed under his breath, and mentally upbraided himself for watching the TREMORS movies so many times. He couldn’t allow Hollywood to begin to color his perceptions of things.

He paid especially close attention to the area around the gate and DHD. The animals were a little more sparse there, a fact he filed away for later on the off chance it might prove useful. He inadvertently flinched as the sharp rattle of gunfire erupted from the other platform. Glancing over, he saw Carter leaning into her weapon’s recoil as she fired off two short bursts at different areas to her front. This was followed by several individual shots, also at different areas. Teal’c, at her side, gestured at different locations after every burst. 

“Problem, Captain?,” O’Neill radioed.

“No, sir,” she replied, “just gathering data. By the way, sir, FIRE IN THE HOLE!”

This last was shouted, not radioed. 

A moment later, Teal’c threw a grenade in the direction of the forest. O’Neill whistled in surprise. On a good day he could toss a grenade thirty to thirty-five meters; Teal’c’s throw had to be every bit of seventy-five meters.

“Good arm, T,” he commented softly, watching as the explosive erupted in a gout of flame.

Carter had gone back to writing furiously in her notebook. This counted as progress of sorts, he supposed. To someone as sharp as Carter, every data point was crucial. He could hear Jackson muttering out of the corner of his ear, and cleared his throat to get the younger man’s attention. A questioning look followed the throat clearing.

“Why here?,” Jackson asked rhetorically. “Why would they come here? Is there some special significance about this place?” 

O’Neill continued glassing the treeline.

“Daniel, there’s something here that doesn’t exist anywhere else on the planet. Us.”

“True,” Jackson conceded. 

“They could have been attracted to the M.A.L.P.’s axle grease, Carter’s lipstick, my Old Spice, Teal’c’s tube socks or your own sweet self. They showed up while we were eating, so they may have a sweet tooth for Air Force grub, though I doubt that. Hell, for all we know, this could be a yearly migration, like lemmings. We may have been unlucky enough to blunder into the middle of this planet’s caribou exodus.”

“Jack, you know the stuff about lemmings is nonsense, right?,” Jackson asked.

“I know,” O’Neill admitted. “My larger point being that there are lots of variables here. Some we don’t know anything about, but it’s a good bet a lot of them have to do with us. The only thing I’d rule out at this point is the fire. They were here long before we built a fire.”

Jackson couldn’t do anything but nod in agreement. From time to time, O’Neill would really come out of left field and surprise him. He had a tendency to forget that the Air Force required its senior officers to have the equivalent of a master’s degree. That much education mixed with O’Neill’s own inborn sharpness and sprinkled with liberal amounts of snark could be a deadly thing. It was a good thing for the universe that O’Neill was one of the good guys.

Good guy or no, O’Neill was watching the hands on his watch creep closer and closer to 0900 with increasing trepidation. There was no shame in calling in the cavalry. It had been drummed into his head over and over for years on end: pride, ego, arrogance, call it what you like, would kill you as dead as any enemy. The second objective to any mission, never spoken aloud, was to safeguard the team and bring them back in one piece. It galled him to ask for help, but he would accept it in a heartbeat to keep SG-1 safe.

“Colonel?,” Carter’s voiced crackled over the two-way, breaking into his brown study.

“Talk to me, Captain,” he said in relief. Surely Carter had something solid to work with. “Please tell me you’ve got everything figured out.”

“No such luck, sir,” she replied. “But Teal’c and I have made some progress.”

“All right,” he grumbled. “Tell me whatcha got.”

“First off, sir,” she began, and he could tell he was in for a stiff dose of science, ”we’ve been proceeding on the assumption they don’t respond to visual cues.”

“Dangerous assumption to make, don’t ya think?,” he interrupted.

“O’Neill, observe,” Teal’c interrupted his interruption.

The Jaffa looped the chinstrap of Carter’s boonie hat over the counterweight end of his staff. Laying prone, he dropped the hat to within a few inches of the ground. None of the creatures appeared to notice. Teal’c began to swing the hat back and forth, narrowly missing several of the animals. A few moved to one side, out of the direction of the swaying headgear, but none grew agitated or belligerent. Their attitude, insofar as it was displayed, seemed to be of complete indifference.

“Interesting, “ O’Neill deadpanned. Jackson shifted around to get a better look.

“No harm, no foul,” he observed.

“Exactly,” Carter confirmed. Teal’c retrieved the staff and removed the hat. 

“Now,” she continued, “watch what happens when we get a little more physical with them.”

Once again, Teal’c lay flat on the platform, and extended the end of the staff to the ground. Swinging it as gently as he could, he used the serpent crest of the counterweight to nudge one of the creatures. It obligingly hopped out of the way, but gave no other sign of discomfiture. Swinging harder, he gave another animal a stiff shove. This one chittered at its neighbor, before returning to its squirrelly business. Finally, Teal’c gave the staff a good healthy swing and knocked a third creature head over tail. It flew through several of its fellows, knocking them every which way, and aside from a general wave of _skree-skree-skree_ -ing, none showed any signs of agitation, but settled in to a new somnolescence.

“Well, now, that _is_ interesting,” O’Neill conceded.

“All right,” Carter said, changing gears,” if you will direct your attention out in front, about halfway to the DHD.”

She slipped the safety off her MP5 and shouldered the weapon, then squeezed off a quick burst. Dirt and fur flew in all directions. The animals nearest the impact went into full cannibal mode, tearing their dead comrades to fragments, which were immediately devoured. In the ensuing moments, all of the creatures began to show clear signs of agitation, even those around the base of the platforms. She pointed out their behavior.

“You know they also could be reacting to the concussion from the muzzle blast,” O’Neill countered, playing Devil’s Advocate.

“Yes, sir,’ Carter acknowledged. “Now, watch, about twenty meters to the left of that spot.” She handed Teal’c another grenade, and they watched as he pulled the pin and repeated his impressive earlier toss. 

“Shouldn’t we be taking cover?,” Jackson wondered aloud.

“Effective range on a grenade is about thirty meters, Daniel, but hit the deck if it makes you feel better,” O’Neill needled.

They saw the black sphere thud into the dirt and roll a few feet before erupting in an orange flash. Again, dirt and fur flew in all directions. Again, nearby animals descended on the dead, and the grisly feast was replicated. Again, all the creatures from the blast site to the platforms grew restless and belligerent. 

“Well how about that,” O’Neill murmured, deep in thought. He shook it off quickly.

“Speculation, Captain?”

“Sir, since we’re assuming they don’t react much to visual stimuli, and they _did_ react to the grenade, secondary assumption is that they weren’t reacting to seeing the grenade being thrown, or the concussion.”

“Meaning?,” he prodded.

“Meaning...,” she repeated, then hesitated for a moment. “Meaning we could be dealing with some sort of low-grade telepathy or empathy. Not enough to read thoughts, but enough to sense intentions.”

“Oh, “ said Jackson, at a bit of a loss.

“Wow,” said O’Neill, a taken a little off guard. “So how does that help us?”

“It doesn’t, sir, at least not directly,” she admitted.

“But it’s one more data point,” Carter and O’Neill said in unison.

“Wait a minute,” Jackson interrupted. “They didn’t react to moderate forms of violence like being hit with the staff, or being shoved out of the way. They only got agitated when we started injuring them.”

“What are you driving at, Daniel?,” O’Neill asked

“If we could climb down without hurting anything, and pick our way through without stepping on anything, we might be able to waltz right out of here.”

O’Neill stepped to the edge of the platform and made a point of taking a good look at its smooth sides and at the group of animals that covered the ground below in a thick, furry layer.

“I think I might have spotted a flaw in your plan,” he remarked, with just a tinge of snark. “Stairs are gone. Unless you can fly, there’s no way to climb down. Jumping down means squashing at least _some_ of our hairy little friends.”

“Rope,” Jackson blurted out, to his surprise as much as anyone’s. “We can make a rope out of the paracord.”

O’Neill mulled it over for a moment, then asked the opinion of Carter, who took her turn mulling it over while chewing the inside of her cheek. Finally, she gave a noncommittal shrug and said, “Why not? Give it a try.”

“All right, Daniel,” O’Neill acquiesced with no little grace. “You win. I hope you know how to braid.” Jackson rubbed his hands together greedily.

“Archaeologists are well known for their braiding skills,” he replied. “Actually, there’s only one thing we’re better at.”

“What’s that?,” Carter asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Bullshitting people.”

It took the better part of an hour to get their “rope” sorted out. Cutting the paracord turned out to be the easiest part; a rather vigorous scientific and anthropological argument broke out over whether it should be three- or four-stranded, with the sides being evenly split in terms of numbers before O’Neill pronounced they would have a three-stranded rope for simplicity’s sake. 

Academic differences settled, the actual braiding proceeded in fits and starts. It had been the better part of a lifetime since O’Neill’s tenure in the Boy Scouts, and while Jackson had at several times been neck deep in primitive cultures and observed various braiding techniques for different materials, he hadn’t been hands-on and had little practical experience. There were several instances where getting a strand out of order necessitated unraveling a couple of inches and re-starting, but at last they had a serviceable rope of fifteen feet in length and capable, at least according to the label on the storage reel, of supporting a load of almost a thousand pounds.

At that point, a second, and much less scientific and anthropological argument broke out over who would use it. Each member of SG-1 had what they felt was an unassailable argument in their favor: O’Neill had experience; Teal’c had vigor; Carter had lesser body mass; Jackson had youth. Finally, O’Neill relented and let Teal’c go. He admitted the Jaffa had the most superior footwork on the team, and they all knew he had flexibility, strength and speed to spare.

Grumbling slightly, O’Neil turned his attention to Carter.

“Captain?,” he asked ungraciously, “do you feel up to taking the staff while Teal’c is being our guinea pig?”

In answer, she scooped the weapon up from the ground with a sweep of her foot, thumbed the aperture open and powered up the emitter in one fluid motion.

“No problem,” she said evenly, and gave him a wolfish grin.

He gathered the makeshift rope into a loose coil and tossed it to the outstretched hands of Teal’c on the other platform, then turned his attention to readying his weapon.

“Just like before, Daniel,” he said offhandedly. “Hopefully, you're right on the money, and we’ll all be at home showering before lunchtime. If not, shoot wide. Most of the mayhem will come from Carter, we just have to fill in the gaps and catch any stragglers.”

Jackson didn’t answer, just gave a pensive-looking nod and slight shudder. Bravado aside and despite the fact he had volunteered along with everyone else, this whole situation made him very nervous. I had been a different set of circumstances earlier. Carter and Teal’c had been responsible for the bulk of the shooting; he had been there as a stopgap. But now, Teal’c would be on the ground and Carter would be operating an unfamiliar weapon. This time everyone would have to pull their weight, academics included.

Teal’c’s face was set in a grim scowl as he looped the rope around the most sizeable outcropping he could find and tied it off fast. He gave the line a substantial yank to test the knot, then nodded to O’Neill, who nodded back.

“All right, folks,” he belted out, “we’re a backstop for Teal’c this time. No shooting unless absolutely necessary, and Teal’c will let us know when it’s necessary. Good luck, buddy.”

With a firm grasp on the rope, the Jaffa slipped off the platform and went hand over hand down the line with a sinuous ease which belied his bulk. Reaching the bottom, he hesitated a moment, using a foot to keep himself off the wall, while using the other to gently scoot one of the furry creatures out of his way. He gingerly set a boot on the ground, then, keeping a tight hold on the rope, ever so softly dug his other foot under another animal and levered it out of he way until he was standing flat-footed and upright on his own.

Flashing Carter a quick thumbs-up, Teal’c let loose the rope and slowly, painstakingly began working his way in the general direction of the gate and DHD. It was nerve-wracking. One. Step. At. A. Time. There were fewer of the animals on the rougher patches of terrain, so he tried to stay on those as much as possible. 

He inched his way past the inoperative rover. There was no response from the _skree_ -ing, mewling horde. He managed five yards past the rover, then ten. It looked like Jackson’s idea was going to work. He scooted another of the creatures out of his way, and it stumbled on the rockier ground, flopping into one of its nearby compatriots, which started squawking at it. Teal’c stood immobile, foot suspended mid-air waiting for the squabble to die down.

Up on the stone platforms, the rest of SG-1 watched Teal’c’s lonely reconnoiter in silence. They saw him stop midstep and saw the animals around him grow agitated for a moment before settling back down. He waited an additional few seconds before resuming his elaborate tiptoe. 

Carter let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. She desperately hoped this would work. She had fired Teal’c’s staff before, but the thought of his life being dependent on her ability to do so made her blood run cold. She gripped the weapon tighter. 

Jackson wiped a forehead that was unaccountably sweaty despite the cool breeze. O’Neill was immobile, eye glued to the scope of his MP5, ready to drop a curtain of hot lead at a moment’s notice. His palms were sweaty, and he could feel them sliding over the checkered grip of his weapon.

_That’s why they’re checkered_ , he reminded himself. 

Five minutes went by, then ten, as Teal’c continued to inch along, step by excruciatingly slow step. The furry animals continued to pay no attention to him. The further away he moved, the more Carter and Jackson started to relax, hoping the plan would work. O’Neill, conversely, got more and more apprehensive as the distance increased.

Teal’c was almost twenty yards from the platforms now. He had hoped that the further away he was, the fewer creatures there would be, but no such luck. He had believed them to be less dense nearer the DHD, but from his vantage point on the ground, he could no longer tell.

O’Neill let his attention stray for just a moment, past where Teal’c was, and on up to the DHD. The animals had been pretty sparse up there earlier, but now they were just as dense there as anywhere. It could have been nothing more than random milling action by the uncountable millions of furballs, but he began to get a distinctly more uneasy feeling nestled in his stomach.

Teal’c had settled into a comfortable state of bored anxiety. While it appeared Daniel Jackson’s idea had been right, he wasn't sure if it was feasible for the entire team to try to follow his footsteps. Even a slight miscue could be disastrous. He slid a booted toe forward and pushed another creature from his path. 

The creature emitted a startled _skree_ , scuttled away from him and cowered behind several of its fellows. Suddenly Teal’c found himself under the scrutiny of several dozen pairs of eyes. He froze in place, not even daring to breathe.

O’Neill, still watching through his weapon’s scope, saw the big Jaffa stiffen and freeze. He thought he saw the nearby animals looking at Teal’c, then blinked several times, just in case he had some weird kind of eye strain going on.

“CARTER!,” he shouted.

“I see them,” came her instant response. She felt an instant sinking feeling in her stomach as she powered up the blaster.

“What’s going on?,” Jackson wanted to know.

“The small and furries are looking at Teal’c,’ O’Neill responded.

“That’s bad?,” Jackson inquired innocently.

“They hadn’t been paying attention to him ‘til now, so, yeah… bad.”

Teal’c was unsure what to do next. The creatures had made no threatening move; he had made no threatening move. They were at a stalemate. The nearby animals began to show signs of agitation, moving restlessly about. O’Neill’s voice crackled over the radio.

“We’ve got eyes on your situation, buddy. Whatever move you make, we’ve got your back,’ he said.

“It is not my back that concerns me at present,” Teal’c radioed back. “I shall try to retrace my steps and see if that improves the situation.”

As soon as he moved, the creatures’ agitation increased. Their squalling and mewling was clearly audible from the platforms. Those nearest Teal'c's’ feet hopped away, until he was standing in the middle of a small ring of open ground. This was not missed by the rest of SG-1

“Stand by, Captain,” O’Neill ordered, slipping the safety off of his weapon. “Daniel, when you start shooting, shoot wide.” He grimaced, knowing what was coming. 

Teal’c’s hand went to his radio, and the furry animals’ agitation increased to a frothing, hooting frenzy.

“O’Neill,“ his voice crackled through the static. “I am going to run very, _very_ fast back to your position. I would appreciate not being shot.”

“We’re ready, Teal’c,’ O’Neill affirmed. “Daniel’s been warned. Go when you’re ready.”

They saw the Jaffa tense, then pivot and burst into a sprint that would have shamed a professional runner. 

The instant he stepped off, Carter opened up with the staff, blasting a trail of charred destruction five yards in advance of his path. She so thoroughly blanketed the route with energy blasts that there was little for O’Neill or Jackson to do. O’Neill squirted a few bursts ahead of Teal’c, but between the Jaffa’s speed and Carter’s thoroughness, it was more to make him feel good about himself than to actually accomplish anything. Jackson never even took the safety off his pistol.

Teal’c covered the thirty yards back to the dangling rope in seconds and was halfway up to the platform before Carter could get the blaster shut down. He scrambled over the edge so quickly she had to swing the staff to one side so as to not clothesline him. 

As soon as he caught his breath, he gave them a brief summary of what had happened. Carter listened with furrowed brow while chewing a lip, one of her favorite pasttimes.

“Sir,” she interjected when Teal’c had finished, “there’s something we’re missing here.”

“I suspect there’s a great many things we’re missing here, Captain,” came O’Neill’s snarky rejoinder. “I’m pulling the plug. You can keep up with whatever observations you want, but no more expended ordnance, and no more experiments. We’re lucky nobody’s gotten hurt thus far. We’ve done what we can; the next move will be up to Hammond.”

He was upset with himself for letting things get to this point, and was still mentally raking himself over the coals for allowing Teal’c to go into danger. The fact that their job was inherently dangerous was beside the point. He had no business adding to the danger.

He checked his watch. Fifteen minutes to scheduled radio check-in. At least they wouldn’t have to wait long. Still silently fuming, he pulled his binoculars out and looked over the area Teal’c had just quitted. After their customary bloodthirsty feast on the corpses of their deceased comrades, things had settled back down for the furry creatures. There was a little more milling around than usual, but nothing out of the ordinary.

“Jack,” Jackson interrupted. “If we’re going to be stuck up here, there’s something we need to iron out right now.”

“Yeah?,” O’Neill invited peevishly, still looking through his binoculars.

“I, ummm… well, in military parlance, errr… latrines?,” Jackson danced around the subject. He couldn’t see O’Neill’s face, as the older man was facing away, towards the forest, but he could hear the laughter in his voice.

“Don’t worry, Daniel. A steady diet of MREs will lock your colon up tighter than a bank vault.”

“Great,” Jackson groused. “And the other?”

“The other,” O’Neill repeated slowly, still gazing off into the distance. “As for the other, I guess you’d best brush up your speech on tree sloths, _Dr._ Jackson.”

“I don’t know anything about tree sloths,” Jackson protested.

O’Neill let the binoculars drop so he could look Jackson in the eye.

“Daniel, how much do you think I really know about trees?,” he asked quietly.


	7. Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: additional salty language and pointlessly wanton death and destruction.  
> and someone breaks a nail, but it's not who you'd expect.

Chapter 7

In which Hammond gets involved

 

However much O’Neill hated bureaucracy, he had to give the SGC points for punctuality. About thirty seconds after 0900, the stargate activated. Watching the familiar splash of the vortex and subsequent wormhole, he felt a touch of nostalgia. 

Sergeant Harriman’s voice crackled over the two-way.

“SG-1 this is Stargate Command. Request status update, over.”

O’Neill could have sworn that he heard each and every capitalized letter in the sentence. He toggled his mike.

“Walter, this is O’Neill. Get General Hammond on the line. We have a situation, over.” He suddenly realized the easy familiarity his team had developed had led them to dispense with the customary “over” of radio-land. Sloppy. Too sloppy.

“Colonel, this is Hammond; go ahead.”

The alacrity with which Hammond had appeared made O’Neill think he had been lurking around the control room the whole time, waiting to hear their update.

As he filled Hammond in about the events of the last twenty four hours, more and more people got involved in the exchange, and what had started out as a two-sided discussion quickly devolved into a conversational free-for-all. When Carter started describing her crude information gathering efforts, Hammond put a pause to her discourse and paged Dr. Fraiser to the control room. 

“You’ve really got yourself into a pickle, Jack,” Hammond couldn’t help but observe with a grin as they waited for the doctor to arrive.

“Yes, sir,” O’Neill agreed. “I take great pride in finding new and different ways to get in trouble.”

Once Fraiser arrived, they recapitulated the discussion to date for her benefit, then painstakingly went over each and every fact they had uncovered. No one begrudged the effort or considered it a waste of time. Each knew that, within the confines of her discipline, Dr. Fraiser was one of the smartest people on base, and had a knack for getting results that bordered on black magic.

The good doctor took meticulous notes on a yellow legal pad and when she was satisfied, retired to a quiet corner of the conference room and began studying them as though her life depended on it.The discussion group broke up as quickly as it had gathered, and soon, only O’Neill and Hammond remained.

“Jack,” the General admonished, “stay on your toes. I’ll have Major Castleman and Colonel Campbell in my office in ten minutes. Between the three of us, we’ll think of something.”

On the other end of the radio, Jackson couldn’t help but notice O’Neill’s involuntary wince.

“General,” he responded, trying to be diplomatic, “is it really necessary to get Campbell involved?”

“Colonel, my flagship team is trapped off world,” Hammond grumped. “If I have to talk to the Devil Himself to get you home in one piece, I’ll do it.”

“Roger that, sir,” O’Neill acknowledged.

“One way or the other, we’ll make radio contact no later than 1300 hours. Hammond out.”

The radio fell silent, and the stargate shut with a _schlooop_! that gave the vague impression of suction.

O’Neill sat, cross-legged, and chewed his lip, thinking. Jackson interrupted shamelessly.

“Hey,” he huffed, plopping down beside O’Neill. “Who’s Colonel Campbell?”

O’Neill blinked, losing his train of thought.

“Hunh? Oh, he’s the CO of the strike team Hammond’s putting together.”

Jackson looked puzzled.

“Why do we need a strike team?,” he asked. 

O’Neill could have been irritated at the question, but decided he needed the distraction.

“Any time there’s a good chance of there being action, Hammond sends in the Marines. They’ve got better firepower than the other SG teams, and they’re pulled from line combat units, so that’s the situation they’re trained for.”

Jackson nodded to show he was following; all this was known to him. O’Neill cleared his throat and went on.

“Between the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs, and the General of the Air Force, it was decided that we needed a team for those special occasions when we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt there would be fighting, probably heavy fighting. Think of situations like hostage rescue, or asset recovery; times when running away just isn’t an option. We’ve already been in jams where we had to stand our ground and duke it out with the bad guys, so the thinking was to have a team specifically for that purpose. Heavy weapons in the hands of some of the baddest men on the planet.”

“So, what, like the _Dirty Dozen?_ ,” Jackson asked with a snort.

“Hardly,” O’Neill countered. “I worked with the Campbell, the CO, probably fifteen, sixteen years ago in Special Operations. You won’t find a better soldier. He’s pulled from every branch of the service to build his team: Rangers, Force Recon, SEALs, you name it. If the Coast Guard has an elite unit, he’s probably got some of them, too. Every one highly decorated with a perfect service record. No joke to say they’re the absolute best of the very best. If you see any of them around the SGC, be very, very polite, Daniel.”

“Are they that dangerous?, Jackson wondered.

“They probably are,” O’Neill allowed. “But be polite to them, because if we ever get captured, that’s who’s coming after us.”

“Oh.” That gave Jackson a moment’s pause. On second thought, maybe they _did_ need a strike team. “Are they coming after us?,” he quizzed. O’Neill shook his head.

“Right now, they’re off world on an orientation exercise. They aren’t scheduled to go online until the first of the month, at which time General Hammond will christen them as SG22 and, I dunno, maybe break a bottle of champagne over Campbell’s head.”

“So why the face when Hammond mentioned him?,” Jackson asked, ignoring the sarcasm.

O’Neill took his sunglasses off and wiped at an imaginary speck of dust, then favored Jackson with a squint.

“Because he won’t go the conventional route. He’s the most resourceful sonofabitch I’ve ever met, but he doesn’t know when to quit. Probably why Hammond picked him. I guarantee you, if he thought he needed a humvee to get us out of here, he’d already have his guys out in the parking lot tearing one apart so it could fit through the gate room blast doors.”

“So who _is_ coming after us?”

O’Neill thought that one over for a minute.

“If I had to bet, I’d say SG3. Castleman’s a pretty crafty operator, and they’ve got the TO&E for a… um, _squirrelly_ mission like this. Which reminds me…,” he trailed off as he toggled the radio. “Captain Carter?”

“Yes, sir?,” she responded.

“I’m tired of calling our fuzzy friends ‘things’. See if you can come up with something scientifically appropriate. And remember, posterity is watching, so keep it clean.”

“Roger that, sir,” Carter acknowledged with a grin, and began racking her brain for the half-remembered rules of taxonomic classification. 

“Oh, and Carter?,” O’Neill repeated.

“Sir?”

“Good job with the staff, Captain,” he complimented. “Teal’c?”

“I am here, O’Neill,” came the rich bass reply.

“You get another gold star for the day. Well done.”

“My attempt met with failure,” Teal’c protested. “Failure should not be rewarded.”

“As Captain Carter would no doubt tell you, failure is sometimes part of the learning process. And I, as your commanding officer, would tell you that regardless of success or failure, your actions were valorous and gallant, and thereby merit recognition.”

“Shiver me timbers,” Jackson said under his breath, so quietly that O’Neill almost didn’t hear him.

An embarrassed Teal’c was saved from having to respond by O’Neill’s shouted ‘Wooo-Hoooo!’ and enthusiastic fist pump, followed by a bone-jarring slap on Jackson’s back. His “That’s how it’s done!,” echoed across the empty forest.

 

 

Despite General Hammond’s assurances, it was, in fact, almost thirteen minutes before Colonel Campbell knocked at his office door. Major Castleman had been paged to Hammond’s office ASAP and had arrived at the same time as the general. The two officers took seats, seniormost sitting first, as per Air Force regulation, and discussed the situation while waiting for the third to arrive.

Campbell had been off-world for four days, familiarizing his team with gate travel, alien planet protocols, and the hundred-and-one different things they would need to operate in a capacity they hadn’t dreamed existed a month ago. Although a customarily tidy man, at present he was wearing three different colors of dried mud, and could be smelled from a dozen yards away, upwind. Recalling him from the training site had taken time, and allowing him more time to clean up wasn’t a luxury Hammond would afford right now.

He knocked lightly on the door frame, then saluted and gave the standard Air Force “Reporting as ordered, sir.” Hammond acknowledged the salute and waved him to a chair.

“You know Major Castleman?,” said Hammond. It was more of a statement than a question. Campbell gave the Major a brief nod.

“We’ve met, General,” he replied, reaching for one of the yellow note pads on Hammond’s desk. Castleman and Hammond both had one already, and he didn’t want to feel left out. Besides, he had the hunch that anything which required him to be recalled from off world was serious enough to necessitate taking notes.

“Good,” said Hammond. “Now, to the situation at hand.”

He outlined the basics of SG1’s mission to P8X-362, their preliminary results, and finally the circumstances of their entrapment. Castleman and Campbell took turns peppering him with questions until both felt they had a comfortable grasp on what was going on.

“We’re going to need something for wide-area suppression,” Castleman commented. “An individual field of fire won’t get the job done.”

“Suppression doesn’t bother me near as much as the area SG1 will have to cover getting to the gate,” Campbell countered. “If there are as many of the creatures as they say, and I don’t doubt them on this, then foot traffic is going to be a pretty chancy thing. It’s a sure bet we’re going to kill at least _some_ of these things, and that seems to be what sets them off. We’ll have to have transport of some kind.”

They fell silent for a moment, mulling their options, then Hammond spoke.

“Major? Recommendations for the wide-area suppression you mentioned?”

“Napalm,” Castleman replied, after a moment’s hesitation. “Drop small napalm canisters from a UAV.” 

Campbell’s eyes lit up with barely-suppressed excitement. He liked napalm.

“How’s the UAV’s accuracy?,” he asked. 

Castleman did some quick mental math, and didn’t like the answer he came up with.

“Plus or minus five meters,” he finally answered.

“You don’t have that kind of wriggle room,” Campbell rebutted. “If the UAV’s off by even half that, you’ll cook SG1,” he rebutted. “But you give me an idea.”

He quickly outlined his strategy, which was equal parts current standard military doctrine and standard military doctrine from fifty years ago. Both his fellow officers looked at him in surprise, then Hammond shook his head and chuckled.

“And the Joint Chiefs thought you wouldn’t fit in around here,” he said, still grinning. Campbell’s only reply was a tight smile. “Go find Sergeant Siler and get started with what we’ve got here. I’ll call the Pentagon and start tracking down the other items. Dismissed.” He was still chuckling and shaking his head as he picked up the phone.

 

 

 

O’Neill was starting to get a little edgy. Jumpy. Stir-crazy. Cabin-fever-y. His feet were tapping distractedly in time to the beat of a song that was constantly changing. He started to fidget. Squirm. Twitch. He knew he was only minutes away from wriggle. Spasm. Jerk.

He needed a distraction. Shuffling a toe through accumulated dirt and dust on top of his platform, he briefly considered bothering Carter to see how she was coming along with devising a name, but decided against it on the basis of a very real fear of being swept away by a sea of scientific jargon. It would be his own fault; he had assigned her a task specifically dealing with technicalities, so if he was engulfed in a tsunami of nomenclature, he couldn’t go crying to anyone else. He decided to pick on his other favorite target: Jackson.

Deprived of the opportunity to examine the reptilian carvings firsthand, as he was now sitting atop them, Jackson had rummaged through his rucksack and extricated a few of the charcoal rubbings he had made yesterday. It was sheer happenstance he had chanced to grab his ruck as they had quitted the campfire the previous evening, and it left him in the happy circumstance of having everything he needed, except the trunk full of books he had brought. That was no great loss, as he had given those up as useless within an hour of their arrival.

Gingerly tracing the outlines with a smudged forefinger, he tried to imagine the thought patterns of the vanished race. What had been truly important to them? Family? Community? Society at large? With a dreamy, faraway look in his eyes, he let his mind wander.

Xenobiology and xenoanthropology had been at loggerheads over similar questions for almost as long as they had known for certain there _was_ such a thing as aliens. The consensus thus far centered on the issue of live birth vs hatching from eggs, assuming terrestrial reproductive biology had similar analogues throughout the galaxy. 

The prevailing school of thought felt that, as it was in human experience, the gestation, live birthing, and child-rearing stages would influence mammalian-centric biology to be predisposed towards forming communities as we knew them. Reptilian and insectoid forms of life, it was theorized, by hatching from eggs or going through the larval stages of development, would lack the deep-seated parent/offspring bond, and while possibly having a hive form of societal structure, would be much more individualistic, perhaps rabidly so.

In many ways, the Goa’uld had turned the whole paradigm on its ear. Being that they were parasites, Jackson idly wondered if xenobiology needed to devise a fourth classification for them based off of fungi. For while the Goa’uld were indeed cognizant of their offspring, and would provide for them, there was nothing of warmth about their bonds.

Goa’uld society was based solely on power: its acquisition, consolidation, enhancement, and the free exercise thereof. To that end, all Goa’uld, regardless of relation, were capable of turning on each other with all the deceit, treachery, and underhanded bloodthirstiness of Cesare Borgia times Gengis Khan with a little Vlad the Impaler thrown in for spice.

His ruminations were interrupted by O'Neill calling his name. He slowly blinked his eyes, as though awakening from a nap, and gave his fellow platform-dweller an inquiring look.

“You were about a million miles away there, Daniel,” O’Neill commented gently.

“Just thinking,” he countered. “Thinking about whoever built this.” He ran his hand over the stonework of what had been an elaborately carved handrail several million years ago.

“I've also been thinking,” he continued, “that I may have been off on dating this place.”

“How long?,” O’Neill asked. 

“Since late yesterday afternoon,” came the answer.

“No, how long are you off by?,” O’Neill rephrased with some asperity in his voice. Jackson shook his head, as he continued absentmindedly caressing the crumbling masonry.

“No idea,” he confessed. “A _lot_. Maybe by a factor of ten.”

“Well, _I’ve_ been wondering,” O’Neill transitioned, “what would possess these people to just pick up and move? We haven’t seen any signs of blast damage from attack, no indication of tectonic upheaval, no bodies in the streets from plague. It just looks like one day they got bored and took off.”

“We haven’t found any streets for there to be bodies in,” Jackson countered. O’Neill shrugged, conceding the point.

“Crazy idea here. What about _them_?,” he indicated their furry captors.

“You mean the mutant chipmunks chased them away?”

“Not in the sense of the reptilians slithering to the getaway ship with tiny teeth clicking at their heels, no. But look at them,” O’Neill said defensively, gesturing at a whole quarter of the horizon, covered wall-to-wall with the small furry creatures he was coming to despise. “That many of anything could wreck agriculture, completely disrupt industry. Hell, even regular commerce might go out the window.”

“Sure it could,” Jackson agreed easily. “But I’d argue against that.” O’Neill’s look invited explanation, so he continued. “Have you taken a good look at the stonework on this site?” O’Neill blinked at the apparent _non sequitur_. A glance at his face clearly indicated the older man hoped that was a rhetorical question. 

“Every single one of these structures is one piece,” Jackson went on. His companion’s puzzlement was manifest, but he didn’t let that slow him down. “There are no joints, seams, or mortar. They weren’t carved out of one block; even though you can see where there are different stones by the different mineral strains in the native stone, it’s all one piece. Whoever built these _fused_ the stones together. Not just melted, but actually fused. Nothing is distorted or bent out of shape, they’ve just all been made into one big piece.”

“Can we do that?,” O’Neill asked suspiciously.

“Only in a laboratory, and only on a tiny scale. My point with all this is that an advanced, mature race was at work here. Something like an invasion of squirrels wouldn’t cause them to throw in the towel. Could you see us leaving Earth in a similar situation?”

A loud snort was O’Neill’s answer.

“Not giving up Earth, Daniel. Even squirrels from Hell wouldn’t chase us away.”

“Something else,” Jackson continued. “Even using my original estimate, we’re talking about events that happened fifty million years ago. Think about it, Jack. Back on Earth, you’d be looking at the last of the dinosaurs and the first of the mammals. How much have the forms of life changed in that time? Humans weren’t even around until two million years ago. These furry whatever-they-ares damn sure weren't around that long ago. Nothing stays the same for that long. Everything either evolves or dies out.”

“Except for sharks,” O'Neill interjected.

“Yes, except for sharks,” Jackson agreed, feeling that the argument wasn’t worth it.

“Okay,” O’Neill continued. “That brings me to the next thing I’ve been wondering about. Just what the Hell do these things _do_?”

Jackson didn’t need to say he was confused; his face said that plainly enough. O’Neill went on.

“Years ago, I lived next to a guy who had an old coonhound: a mangy, droop-eared, lazy coonhound. Wouldn’t chase cats, wouldn’t dig holes, wouldn’t wag his tail. Didn’t do anything except eat, sleep, and crap in my yard. Daniel, I don’t think these things even do that much. All they seem to do is stand around.”

“That’s not true,” Jackson rebutted. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a lot less grass around here than when we arrived.”

“Hmph,” was O’Neill’s answer. “I guess one out of three isn’t too bad.”

“All right, Jack. Let’s say that fifteen or twenty thousand years ago, you were an Asgard who decided to visit Earth. You land your flying saucer in the middle of what will one day be Kansas, and stay there for two days, which happen to be April 11th and 12th. You spend two lovely spring days in the middle of flat grasslands, and decide you’ve ‘seen Earth’.”

O’Neill nodded to show he was following. Where to, he hadn’t the slightest idea, but he was following. Jackson went on.

“Now, technically, you _have_ ‘seen Earth’, but you and I both know you really _haven’t_. That’s essentially what we do every time we go through the gate. The SGC sends a M.A.L.P., sucks up a couple days’ worth of data, we spend a day snooping around on-planet, and in our arrogance, we think we’ve ‘seen’ the planet. We usually don’t see any more than our hypothetical Asgard. This time around, we saw something new and different.” 

 

Sergeant Siler was almost done with the modifications to the rover Hammond had ordered for deployment. He was hunched over the access panel feverishly digging around inside the rover’s engine cowling connecting tiny electrical leads to the chassis power supply, and cursing the dim light in the maintenance bay. Most of the work he did in the SGC was tightly spec’d and rigorously checked against plans or blueprints or some other official design. The occasions like this, where he was free to improvise, were rarer than hen’s teeth, and he savored them like fine wine.

As Siler was finishing connecting electrical leads and admiring his handiwork, Major Castleman and Colonel Campbell were examining a long, lethal piece of weaponry. Lustful eyes traced the lines of gleaming metal with an almost feral desire. Itchy palms ached to give lingering caresses while adjusting leather harness straps. If this kept up, someone was going to need a cigarette before long. Three identical copies were located at different work stations around the maintenance area.

“I had not thought to ever see one in person,” Castleman said, in a hushed, almost reverent tone, “much less have the chance to use one.”

“These darlings were still standard infantry gear at the end of Vietnam,” Campbell replied, like the High Priest of the Cathedral of Firepower giving the _Pater Noster_ of Destruction. “We trained with them at Ground Warfare School, but I’ve never used one in a Deep Shit Situation before. Uncle Sam decided they didn’t have any battlefield utility in the early 80s and took them out of the inventory.”

“Then where did Hamm-,” Castleman began when Campbell cut him off with an upraised hand.

“Ours is not to question the ways of The Man,” he answered. “Instead, let us give thanks for the beneficence which has delivered this beautiful work of art into thine hands, Major.”

“Colonel? You’re not going to…?”

Campbell gave him a sad shake of the head, then clapped Castleman on the shoulder in a reassuring, manly fashion.

“Fate has decreed otherwise, son. You, Major, have a Rendezvous with Destiny on P8X-362. I am returning to my unit.”

“That’s a bit melodramatic, isn’t it Colonel?,” Castleman asked.

“Roll with it, young man,” came the answer with a roguish smile. “Now go kick some ass.”

 

“Carter,” O’Neill radioed, “How’s the name game coming?”

“Not well, sir,” she replied. “Kingdom, phylum, class, and order were a piece of cake, but I just don’t have enough information to pin down a family.”

O’Neill felt a cold tendril of fear creep up his spine; a hurricane of scientific jargon was bearing down upon him, he was certain. He must quash it at all costs.

“Captain,” he said severely, “it is in incredibly poor taste for you to mention cake, given the circumstances.”

“Yes, sir,” she acknowledged contritely. “When we get home, I will personally bake you a cake by way of apology. Any flavor, your choice.”

“You’re too kind,” he responded graciously. “Now about the name, not being a scientist, I’m not too worried you don’t have all the boxes checked, just give me something short and sweet.”

“ _Diabolis sciurus_ , Colonel. ‘Devil squirrel’.”

“Well,” he grumped, “it’s certainly descriptive. Doesn’t really roll off the tongue, though.”

“Taxonomic classification isn’t exactly poetry, sir,” she reminded him. “I had considered going with something that had more of an 1800s explorer kind of feel: ‘Jackson’s Ground Squirrel’.”

“Oooh, I like that,” Jackson chimed in.

“I figured you might,” Carter admitted, grinning at his enthusiasm. “‘Teal’c’s Palm Squirrel’ and ‘Carter’s Chipmunk’ were also finalists.”

“No love for the O’Neill clan?,” O’Neill asked, hurt written all over his face.

“Sorry, Colonel,” she apologized, hiding a smile that kept getting wider. “I just couldn't come up with anything that had a good rhythm to it.”

“Oh, come ON!,” he groused in mock exasperation. “What about ‘O’Neill’s… marmots’? Groundhogs? ‘O’Neill’s Woodchucks’?”

“See what I mean,sir?,” she sympathized. He looked crestfallen

“Well, crap,” he admitted, deflating a little “What about…”

He was interrupted by the unmistakable sounds of activating chevrons, followed by the stupendous liquid _ka-whoosh!_ of an activated stargate. All four of them saw the not-really-watery surface of the event horizon that signified safety and home stabilize. The hundred yards separating the gate from their platforms might as well have been as many miles. Their radios crackled to life.

“SG-1, this is Hammond. Do you read me, over?”

“We read you five by, General,” O’Neill responded. “Go ahead, over.”

The few seconds of empty static seemed like an eternity to the anxiously waiting team. Empires rose and fell; continents sank into the oceans; mountains were born and grew to full height. In actuality, it couldn’t have been more than five seconds, it just felt longer. _Much_ longer.

“Colonel,” the reply finally came, “SG-3 is coming to your position. Stand fast, but be ready to move out when the opportunity presents itself.”

“Believe me, General,” O’Neill reassured him passionately, “we’re more than ready to move out.”

“All right, campers!,” he belted out. “Stand by. No ideas what Hammond’s got up his sleeve, but be ready to go in a hurry.”

“Hammond doesn’t wear sleeves,” Carter reminded him via two-way.

“That’s because he’s extra tricky,” O’Neill shot back. “Last one to the gate buys the first round at O’Malley’s.”

The empty seconds ticked by. In their mind’s eye, each member of SG-1 could envision the rescue team: securing a last-second piece of gear, checking each other’s equipment, making the long tramp up the walkway grating to the stargate (and boy, was that ever a long walk when going into an unknown situation). Mentally, they each prepared themselves for any possible thing that could happen. Between the four of them, with combined experiences and practical knowledge encompassing almost a hundred years and several dozen planets, there shouldn’t have been any way they could be surprised, but none of them was even close to expecting what happened.

Without warning, an enormous gout of orange flame shot out of the stargate. Everything from the event horizon forward for about fifteen yards was completely immolated. Burned to the proverbial crisp. Hundreds of the still-formally-unnamed creatures were almost instantly converted into charcoal briquets. 

Fortunately, as Jackson had noted previously, most of the grass had been eaten, so there was very little to burn, but what there was caught fire, and burned cheerfully. The playful little breeze that meandered through the ruins wafted the stench of burning hair to the platforms, choking SG-1, who stood shocked into stunned silence.

Another jet of flame blasted out of the stargate, turning the area between the gate and the DHD into a giant puddle of fire. It burned out quickly; in less than thirty seconds there was only smoldering grass stubble and innumerable tiny black lumps that had been Devil Squirrels only a minute ago.

Without warning, dust began erupting from the ground. O’Neill looked on in puzzlement for a moment, wondering if this was a new effect from the same weapon and what in the world it could be, when it clicked in his brain.

“EVERYBODY DOWN!,” he roared, not bothering with the radio. What had thrown him off was the absolute silence of the assault. The spurts of dust could only have one cause: someone on the other side of the gate was shooting through it, probably with something large caliber and most likely, belt-fed. It’s what he would have done in their place. The noise on the other end, at the SGC embarcation room, must be truly cacophonous, he thought, proud of himself for actually using the word ‘cacophonous’.

“What do you think, sir?,” Carter radioed. “.50 cal?”

“That’s my guess,” he confirmed.

“What’s the range on that?,” she added a second question to her first.

“Oh, about two thousand meters further away from the gate than we are,” he replied offhandedly. “Why?”

“I was just thinking,” she replied with an impish grin. “P8X-362 is about three hundred light years from Earth. That’s a mighty long shot, even for Ma Deuce,” she commented, using the common nickname for the M2 heavy machine gun. “Betcha that's some kind of record.”

“If it's not, it should be,” O'Neill retorted.

“What the Hell IS that?,” Jackson asked.

“That, I assume, would be SG-3,” O’Neill answered.

“Not what I meant,” the younger man rebutted.

“Ah. In that case, what you are seeing is a .50 cal and a pair of flamethrowers doing some landscaping. Hope your scaly reptile friends don’t mind.”

“Flamethrowers?,” Jackson was aghast. “I thought those were outlawed after World War 2.” 

O’Neill pulled his mini binoculars out of a vest pocket so he could get a better look. Something told him he might not ever get the chance again, so he’d best not pass this one up. Whoever was running the machine gun stopped shooting, but the flamethrowers kept spewing at a steady clip.

“Well,” he drawled slowly, “that’s a common misconception, Daniel. They were used throughout Korea and Vietnam. In ‘77 or ‘78 the DoD decided they weren’t going to be much use in urban operations, which was where they thought we’d be fighting the Soviets, so they axed the whole weapons system. All our allies have ‘em: Brits, Frenchies, Aussies, everybody but Uncle Sam. Wow, those guys are really pouring the juice on.”

The stargate’s event horizon rippled, and the form of a rover nosed its way onto P8X-362. Amidships, where the baggage was usually stowed, the storage areas had been removed, and a small platform welded in place. Mounted to the platform was the heavy-duty tripod for the M2, and holding onto the machine gun’s spade grips was none other than Major Castleman. Flanking the rover on either side were two pairs of men, each wearing the bulky backpack apparatus of the flamethrower and carrying the meter-long tube that held the igniter assembly. 

As they watched, the portside pair spewed a burst that covered about ten yards square. The furry creatures did not react in the slightest. Thousands went up in a greasy black cloud of smoke. A few near the periphery of the flames hopped away, but the panicky mass exodus all onlookers expected never materialized. With a soft, sighing _swoosh_ , the starboard group splashed a burn directly ahead of the rover with similar results.

“What the Hell?,” O’Neill mumbled, still watching through the field glasses.

“What is it?,” Daniel asked, almost wishing he’d brought his binoculars, instead of leaving them in his top right desk drawer. O’Neill toggled the radio instead of answering.

“Carter, are you seeing this?,” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” she replied, voice thick with disbelief.

“Jack? What is it?,” Jackson repeated. 

“The animals,” O’Neill finally answered. “They're not doing anything. Not running away, not attacking, nothing. It’s like they don’t associate the fire with… well, anything. No reaction.”

“Damn,” was Jackson’s only response.

SG-3 had reached the DHD. Still there was no resistance from the creatures. Castleman’s voice crackled over the radio.

“Looks like you folks got stuck in a bad part of town. Not much in the way of taxi service out here, I bet,” he said. 

“No, but there’s this fantastic little Thai place right around the corner,” O’Neill replied, not to be outdone.

“You’ll have to show me when we’re done, Colonel. Now in the meantime, y’all hold tight, and we’ll be there in just a minute,” Castleman said, racking the action on the nearly six foot long machine gun for emphasis.

While the M2 is horrifically effective against enemy personnel, under modern military doctrine, it is more commonly used for suppression than assault. To put it in civilian terms, the heavy machine gun is used to keep the bad guys hunkered down while you call in artillery or air support. Using a .50 cal round against a man-sized target is extreme overkill; in this instance, each round was twice as long and four times as heavy as the individual squirrels.

Castleman squeezed off a burst directly in front of the rover, and ten yards out from the DHD, began angling over toward where SG-1 was trapped on their stone platforms. This should be cake, he thought, watching the steady stream of lead chew up the ground like an outsized roto-tiller. 

The massive recoil of the enormous gun made the whole rover shake. Instead of the short, sharp _brrrap!_ of the MP5s, or the meatier chattering of the Marines’ M4s, the M2 made a visceral, stuttering _chuh-chuh-chuh-chuh!_ that could be felt as much as heard. Even the most wayward and wilful of Uncle Sam’s children paid attention when Ma Deuce spoke.

Someone else who paid attention were the furry creatures. The moment Castleman opened up with the machine gun, they drew back, them almost immediately regrouped and charged the rover. This did not go unnoticed.

“Colonel!,” Carter squawked into the radio.

“I see, Captain,” O’Neill responded. “Castleman! Lay off the .50 cal!”

The heavy machine gun fell silent, and the flanking flamethrowers absorbed the first rush of attacking squirrels, but the damage had been done. The formerly docile creatures were thoroughly stirred up now, and the rover was the target of their fury.

“Why in the Hell did they suddenly get nasty?,’ O’Neill wondered aloud over the radio.

“Blood,” Carter piped up. “Burning them didn’t spill blood, but shooting them did. As soon as they smelled it…,” she trailed off.

“They went ape,” O’Neill finished the thought. It made sense. He would much rather it _not_ have made sense, but Carter was right.

“This isn’t going to end well,” Jackson said quietly. O’Neill responded with a stream of invective that is better left unrecorded. A lifetime in the Air Force had given him a range of profanity that was broad, deep, and quite colorful, and on this occasion he plumbed its fullest depths, measured its fullest widths, and explored every color of its rainbow. He wanted very badly to do something, _anything_ really, but they could only watch in helpless frustration. SG-1 couldn’t even give supporting fire, for fear of hitting SG-3.

“Castleman, fall back through the gate,” he ordered tersely.

“We can still make your position,” the Major objected.

“At which point, you'll be trapped with us,” O’Neill countered. “I’m not sharing my platform with five other people; it’s not that big. Walter, if you can hear me, shut down the gate so SG-3 can dial out.”

“Are you sure, Colonel?,” Hammond’s voice came over the radio.

“General, the creatures have gone into attack mode. Castleman can use the .50 cal to hold them off while he dials the gate, but there isn’t enough ammo in the world to beat them back and come get us. Those flamethrowers are gonna start running short of fuel any time now. This was a good try, sir, it just came up a little short.”

“All right, Jack,” Hammond capitulated with a sigh. “You’re the man on the scene; you get to make the call. Major Castleman, we’re shutting down the gate on our end. At your convenience, dial home and fall back.”

“Yes, sir,” the crestfallen Major acknowledged in a deflated tone.

The stargate closed with a sudden _foop!_

“Harris, dial us home,” Castleman ordered resignedly. 

One of the flamethrower operators split off from the group and operated the DHD, bringing the gate back to life. The other three flamethrowers took up the slack, bathing the immediate vicinity in fire. Their bursts were growing noticeably shorter, the streams smaller. O'Neill's prognostication had been right on the money.

Castleman didn’t bother turning the rover around; it would go just as fast in reverse as it would in drive. He engaged the transmission and gunned the engine at the same moment the gate opened with a familiar splash. Harris rejoined SG-3, and all four flamethrowers belched burning napalm as they backed toward the gate. One after the other, the fuel tanks on the flame projectors ran dry; only Harris had any fuel left, due to him stopping while dialing the gate. At an order from Castleman, he shut the tanks down.

The major, meanwhile, opened fire with the heavy machine gun, covering the last few yards of their retreat to the gate. The M2 couldn’t cover the same area as four flamethrowers, and the cannibalistic chipmunks began to overhaul SG-3. O’Neill could see that the airmen and the furry animals would reach the gate in a virtual dead heat, and toggled his radio.

“General Hammond, you might want to shut the blast doors. Castleman’s going to have uninvited guests come through with him, and I think you’re going to have some containment issues.”

“Roger that, Colonel,” Hammond’s voice came scratchy through the two-way.

Castleman was really laying into the .50 caliber; the barrel was heating up, and the occasional shot was going wild. Right before he went through the event horizon, he grabbed his mike.

“God, Jack, I’m sorry,” he radioed. “I really wanted to bring you home.”

“Don’t sweat it, Tom,” O’Neill reassured him. “We’re not done for yet. Get outta here.”

A second later, the gate shut down, leaving them, once again, all alone with only several million ravenous rodents for company.

“That went well,” Jackson remarked.

“That’s my line, Daniel,” O’Neill groused. “Come up with your own material instead of stealing mine.” At that moment, a burst of static rolled out of the radio, followed by Carter’s observation, “That went well.”

“What is this? A convention?,” an exasperated O’Neill asked no one in particular.


	8. Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seriously salty language from Janet Fraiser  
> Yes, THAT Janet Fraiser.  
> Dissections are discussed, but not in any great detail.
> 
> Apologies if the spacing is all wonky- I've been fighting it, to no avail.

Chapter 8

In which Janet Fraiser shows what she can do

 

Inside Cheyenne Mountain, General Hammond had a very different situation to deal with. Instantaneously recognizing the import of O’Neill’s last words, he had ordered the blast doors shut. The moment Castleman had rematerialized, he had given the command to close the iris. 

In the following moments, the iris began to ring with a steady string of small ‘thuds’. Each impact was the mark of a devil squirrel that had pursued Castleman’s rover through the gate and had met an untimely demise. Hammond quickly ordered the gate shut down. This was done posthaste, but they still had to contend with several dozen small furry uninvited guests. 

Fortunately, upon their arrival at the SGC, their violent tendencies immediately stopped, but unfortunately, they were so small that most of them dropped through the grate walkway and onto the concrete floor, where they immediately took off in all directions. Hiding may not have been their intention, but they were damned good at it. Every nook and cranny had devil squirrels crammed into it. They were underfoot. There were more of them in computer cabinets. They were, to Siler’s dismay, chewing on cables, shredding insulation and generally raising holy hell with the electrical system. 

Lacking any better way to deal with the situation, Hammond resorted to a dozen leather-glove-wearing airmen catching the unwary creatures by hand and depositing them in a large cardboard box, which became two cardboard boxes, and then several cardboard boxes.

Hammond was an Air Force General, a commander of men, a giver of orders. What he was _not_ was a farmer Jones, keeper of animals, and provider for their needs. A lifetime in the service had taught him that sometimes the best way to deal with a problem was to give it to someone else.

“Get a cart up here to move these boxes,” he ordered tersely. “Page Dr. Fraiser to the gate room on the double, and reestablish contact with SG-1.”

Sergeant Harriman gave a curt nod of acknowledgement and accomplished the first two orders while initializing the dialing program, efficient as ever. 

The first chevron had just locked in place when an enormous cascade of sparks erupted from one of the gate’s superconductors, accompanied by the ear-splitting ripping sound of an uncontrolled electric arc. A tendril of smoke curled from the row of electrical junction boxes to the left of the embarcation walkway, and the air was filled with the twin odors of roasting meat and burned hair. The poppy red of the activated chevron slowly faded out.

“The gate is dead, sir,” Harriman said. “Zero function; no power.”

“Find me Sergeant Siler, Walter,” Hammond said tiredly, voice thick with frustration, “then get with the airmen in the gate room and make sure they find all those damn things.”

“Yes, sir. Sir? Dr. Fraiser is requesting access to the gate room.”

“Tell her to stand by. I want all those animals rounded up and in boxes before those blast doors move an inch,” Hammond responded.

Out in the gate room, airmen were removing access panels, conduit service heads, and cabinet closure plates. More and more of the squirrels were discovered, some in places where it seemed physically impossible for them to have wormed their way in.

Corridor 1A was beginning to fill up. When Dr. Fraiser had been paged to the gate room on the double, no details had been given, so she had assumed the worst and arrived with a gurney, a crash cart, and two assistants in tow. Upon being confronted with a closed blast door, her temper had been roused. She supposed there were injured personnel inside that she was being denied access to. Calling the control room and being told to essentially hang out while other things were attended to had not improved her temper. 

Fraiser’s huddled conference with her nurse practitioners was rudely interrupted by the appearance of four airmen pushing empty hand carts. No one knew why they were there, just that they had all been ordered to the gate room, and were now being kept out of it.

In the meantime, Siler had finished his inspection of the electrical systems and was giving Hammond a report over the intercom, which was awkward, to say the least.

“Main power and all four subsystems are wrecked, sir,” he said. “Non-electrical systems were untouched: comms, data, control wiring, not a scratch. Superconductor got a little overload scorch, but the relay tripped and it’s still within specs. It’s almost like those things were on a mission to shut us down.”

Hammond mulled this over for a moment, various thoughts chasing each other around his brain. Carter had mentioned the possibility the creatures might share a hive mind. Was it also possible they were being used or controlled by another party or parties for nefarious purposes? Were they even capable of being directed? Was this a case of deliberate destruction or blind instinct? He tabled the thought or the moment.

“How long to repair the damage, Sergeant?”

Siler gave an appearance of doing complicated calculations in his head, but it was all for show. He had known as soon as he looked at the chewed-up cables.

“We can be back up and running in four hours, General,” he finally answered.

“Make it happen,” Hammond acknowledged with a nod. “How’s the hunt going?”

“They’re done now, sir, just putting everything back together. The little buggers got into everything that wasn’t nailed shut.”

“But you’re confident you got them all?,” Hammond wanted to be really, _really_ sure before he let the blast doors open. Having an unknown number of the mutant chipmunks running around Cheyenne Mountain would be a nightmare.

“Yes, sir,” Siler responded. “We got them all.”

“Good. Get to work Sergeant.” 

Hammond left the control room, and made his way down the staircase to corridor 1A. Being a very hands-on type of personality, he was itching to survey the damage for himself. Reaching the corridor, he pulled up short at a tangle of personnel and equipment. Elbowing his way through the crowd, he made it to the blast door, where Fraiser was fuming impatiently, and doing the Air Force M.D. version of drumming her fingers on the tabletop. Waiting and wasting time was like fingernails on a chalkboard to her.

Hammond punched the intercom and ordered Harriman to open the doors. Obediently, the ton of reinforced steel battleship plating slid into its home in the ceiling, and corridor 1A disgorged its occupants into the gate room. The ensuing rumpus closely resembled a very unruly rugby scrum. 

SG-3, complete with Harris’ still-dripping flamethrower and Castleman’s Death Rover (as he had taken to calling it) were eagerly waiting to get to the locker room and wash away the stink of failure with as much hot water as they could find. Fraiser and her two assisting nurses, with crash cart and gurney in tow, attempted to filter through them, while the four airmen pushing handcarts attempted to flank the whole group, throwing the whole area into a complete snarl.

Hammond watched the group sort themselves out with the beginnings of what, on someone else, might be considered a smirk. He had observed many Charlie Foxtrots in his time, but some special quality about the SGC amplified them to the point where the ludicrous overtook the serious and beat it into submission. It was either a previously unsuspected property of the naquadah, or, in addition to instantaneous travel over great distances, the Ancients had made the gates capable of generating a Vortex of Dumbassity. 

Confusion was writ large on Fraiser’s face, as instead of being confronted with the anticipated casualties, she was looking at a row of medium-sized cardboard boxes. She edged over to one. Bracing herself, she peeked over the edge and looked inside, fervently hoping that something terrible hadn’t happened to an offworld team and what was left of them had been sent back in this rather cavalier fashion.

She was confronted by about fifteen copies of devil squirrels. They had been complacent, for the most part staring blankly at the brown cardboard walls now surrounding them, but the moment Fraiser’s head appeared over the edge of the box, they launched into a restless _skree_ -ing gyration. She backed away, hoping they would settle down, but the chirping and writhing continued unabated. The doctor favored Hammond with a quizzical look. She certainly hadn’t been called here to deal with casualties. At least not human ones.

“This is no longer a theoretical matter, doctor,” he said in a manner more forceful than usual. His frustration with this entire episode was beginning to show. “I want you to find out everything you possibly can about these things. Do whatever you have to, but get me some intel to work with.” The order wasn’t unexpected, but that didn’t make it any more welcome.

“I’ll do everything in my power,” she promised, “but, sir…,” she trailed off into an uncharacteristically awkward silence. 

Hammond’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. About half of the headaches he had to deal with at the SGC originated with either Dr. Jackson or Dr. Fraiser raising philosophical objections to something. It was an admirable trait, one that raised them both in his esteem, but it was still a royal pain in the neck. He was anticipating another protest, possibly this time over vivisections or some such thing.

“Is there a problem, doctor?,” he asked gently, like the calm before the storm. Fraiser stood, tiny but resolute, giving no sign of flinching or faltering. 

_Here it comes_ , Hammond thought.

“General, I’m a people doctor. Aside from the occasional bit of off-world weirdness we get here, I deal with humans almost exclusively. I can do exploratory on one of those things all day long, but I won’t necessarily know what I’m looking at. It would be really easy to miss something, especially as small as those animals are.”

That was most definitely not the argument he had been expecting.

“What do you suggest?,” he asked, puzzled.

“We either need a vet that can keep their mouth shut, or…,” she let the idea hang out there for a moment.

“Or?,” Hammond prompted.

“A xenobiologist. A good one.” 

Mentally, he kicked himself for not thinking of that on his own.

“Who? Dr. Harlow?,” he asked. 

Fraiser gave him a look that would have frozen nitrogen.

“Harlow almost got Teal’c killed, plus we know he’s in Colonel Maybourne’s pocket. Sir, I’m surprised you’d even consider letting him back on base.”

“I wasn’t,” Hammond reassured her, “but that still doesn’t tell me _who_.”

“Dr. Frank Roylott, from Area 51. He’s top of the field in xeno, plus he’s got full security clearances.” 

Hammond’s nose wrinkled in poorly-concealed disgust.

“Area 51’s where a lot of our problems have come from,” he pointed out.

“Yes, sir,” Fraiser admitted, “but I still think he’s our best choice.”

After a moment’s thought, Hammond capitulated. Whoever the black ops people were, they had proven to be continual thorn in his side. However, the worst the bad guys from Area 51 could do would be to steal a few of the squirrels, and in his current state of mind, he would gladly have given them a box full.

“All right,” he finally said. “He’ll be here within an hour. Get as much prepped for him as you think necessary.” She nodded.

“But hear me loud and clear, doctor,” he went on. “You watch him like a hawk. If he does anything that doesn’t look right, smell right, or just plain rubs you the wrong way, notify me immediately and I’ll throw him so far _under_ the brig, it’ll take sunlight a month to get to him.”

“Understood, General,” she said, smiling at the homey aphorism.

“Get to it,” he urged her, while giving the defunct stargate a long look. “I’ve got to make a couple of calls.” 

Hammond turned on his heel and stalked out of the cool, echoey room, shoes clicking on the cold concrete. Fraiser looked at the four airmen, still standing expectantly by their carts. She pointed at two of them, one on either end.

“You two, start wheeling these boxes down to the infirmary. The nurse will show you where to go,” she said, indicating one of the nurse practitioners still patiently waiting, then turned her attention to said nurse. “Put them in isolab 2, and start prepping for dissections, at least a dozen. You may as well take the crash cart with you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the nurse acknowledged before wheeling the cart through the doorway. The airmen spent a few frantic seconds stacking boxes on their carts before hustling to catch up with the rapidly retreating nurse.

Fraiser turned her attention back to the remaining airmen. Siler, along with three of his assistants had arrived with their gear and, without fanfare, started tearing out sections of burned-out electrical conduit. The doctor waved over three other airmen who had been part of the squirrel-hunting party and were still wearing their gloves. The five men clustered around the diminutive doctor, who had to shout to make herself heard over the racket Siler’s men were raising.

“Airmen, go over this room with a fine-toothed comb. I want every one of those animals that’s still here crated up in five minutes.”

“Doc, we already got the live ones,” one man objected.

“I know. What I want are the dead ones. I don’t care if they’re in one piece or a dozen, I want them all. Get contamination bags and gloves out of the storage reefer in the hall. Do not, under any circumstances, touch them bare-handed.”

The thought seemed to cause some consternation in the small group; a worried buzz of conversation drifted up from the rear rank. The airmen started looking at each other uncertainly. Fraiser wasn’t about to let that nonsense get started.

“TEN-HUT!,” she shouted, voice echoing loudly enough to startle Sergeant Siler, who involuntarily snapped to attention, dropping a large prybar on his foot in the process.

“There seems to be some confusion here,” she went on in a tone acid enough to have stripped paint from the walls, had there been any. “Someone seems to have the notion that what I want you to do may not be a good idea. Now, I could be nasty about it, but I’d like to think we’re all friendly enough here that won’t be necessary.” She paced slowly from side to side, pinning them in place with a glare, eyeing them like they were wayward children caught stealing cookies. 

“I’d like to think that all the times I’ve taken care of each of you might have earned me a little consideration in your eyes. All the times, Jacobs, I’ve treated the asthma that you’re not supposed to have at this posting. All the times, Edwards, I’ve given you salve for contact dermatitis when you were fool enough to mistake poison ivy for wild strawberries. All the times, Johnston, I gave you an extra-large vitamin C injection because you may have picked up something in your off-hours ‘recreation’. I trust I need not go on.” 

She stopped pacing, and favored them with, if possible, an even more evil look than before.

“I’d hate to go on, because I’ve just appealed to your better natures. I like to believe in people and give them a chance to do the right thing. So, if that doesn’t work the only thing I have left is that I AM A FUCKING CAPTAIN IN THE FUCKING AIR FORCE AND I JUST GAVE YOU A FUCKING ORDER. NOW MOVE YOUR ASSES BEFORE I GET SERGEANT SILER’S HAMMER AND MOVE THEM FOR YOU.”

Her voice cut through the abrupt, deathly stillness of the cavernous room. The juxtaposition of a loud, scary voice coming out of a tiny, seemingly delicate woman was too much. In three seconds there wasn't an airman to be seen. Fraiser eyed Siler venomously as he cautiously retrieved his prybar, then snapped off a letter-perfect salute. 

She smiled and returned his salute. It wasn’t often necessary, but people would do well to remember that Janet Fraiser had a lot of Italian heritage that could rear its head at odd times. Truthfully, the occasional reminder was kind of fun to give. 

The remaining nurse, standing stock-still by the gurney, had done her best to keep a straight face through Fraiser’s outburst, and by a Herculean effort of will had not laughed out loud when the group of airmen had scattered like frightened chickens. 

“Eve,” Fraiser said to her, “keep an eye on them. I don’t think they’ll step out of line, but keep an eye on them all the same. I’m going to prep the isolab. When they get done, load up the gurney and bring the carcasses to me. Hopefully we’ll get everything squared away before Dr. Roylott gets here.” Eve looked thoughtful for a moment.

“You’ve mentioned him before. Isn’t Dr. Roylott the guy who…?,” she trailed off.

“MmmHmm,” Fraiser confirmed.

“And he did the thing with the…?,” the nurse asked, unwilling to voice the words.

“Yep.”

“Oh, my,” Eve concluded, fanning herself with the collar of her scrubs, looking like an Antebellum Southern belle with a sudden case of ‘the vapours’.

Things were about to get interesting.

 

___________________________________________________ 

After Dr. Fraiser departed, the remaining airmen breathed a sigh of relief. All of them had been her patients at one time or another and were familiar with her normal manner. The display she had just put on, while not unprecedented by other officers at the SGC, had been jarring and unsettling considering the source. All hands agreed she must have been mightily upset by something.

They paired up, leaving Jacobs as the odd man out, and began bagging squirrel specimens. Rounding the front of Castleman’s Death Rover, Edwards found three intact carcasses on the front fairing, apparently killed by the concussion from the M2’s muzzle blast.

“Look ‘pon this, Friend Johnston,” he said, imitating archaic speech. “The Mother speaks, and the very sound of her voice is as Death.” 

Johnston nodded sagely, as he squeamishly picked up a dead squirrel and snapped a plastic specimen bag over it.

“Even so, Brother Edwards, the Voice of the Mother is mighty. She will be pleased with the offering,” he said.

“The Mother is the powerful tool of the righteous,” intoned Edwards in a horrific imitation of a Gregorian chant. “She smiteth mine enemies and causes them to be laid low.” Both airmen genuflected before the two meter long machine gun.

Jacobs, working nearby, spared them a nasty glare.

“Jesus, would you two knock it off. It’s creepy, the way you talk about that damned thing, like it’s alive,” he snarled. Edwards recoiled in mock horror.

“Stay your tongue, Friend Jacobs,” he admonished, hastily bagging a dead squirrel. “It is unwise to speak ill of the Mother.”

“Dammit, Edwards,” Jacobs started in, ready to vent his frustrations on the other man. 

The barrel of the M2, superheated by Castleman’s suppression fire on P8X-362, had slowly been shedding heat in the cool air of the gate room. At this particular moment, the barrel’s metal did what metal does when its cools: namely, it contracted with a series of quiet _pings_ and a low groan which neatly interrupted Jacobs’ attempted rant. 

Johnston shook his head sadly.

“You have offended the Mother, Brother Jacobs,” he droned. “She is displeased with your lack of humility.” Edwards leaned closer to the weapon with an attitude of intent listening before finally nodding his head.

“Thy ill-chosen words have caused the Mother to turn her face from you. No longer shall she cover you with her aegis. No longer shall her sword stand ready to avenge. Repent, Friend Jacobs, repent; thy time grows short.”

“You guys are assholes,” Jacobs snapped, then went to gather squirrel corpses elsewhere.

 

______________________________________

Meanwhile, back on P8X-362, SG-1 was doing their best to re-settle themselves after the emotional rollercoaster of being trapped, almost rescued, and trapped again. Under different circumstances, O’Neill would have applied the ‘A busy crew is a happy crew’ dictum he’d learned at the Academy, but at present, there was literally nothing for them to do.

“Take five, people,” he announced. “Smoke if you’ve got ‘em.”

On the other platform he could see Carter explaining the joke to Teal’c. In a way, this whole situation was totally unfair to her. He could make all the corny jokes in the world, and she would be the one responsible for their explanation. Fortunately, Teal’c had grown accustomed to his use of idiom, so clarifications weren’t as frequent as before, but they were still necessary. 

He could see Carter reach for her radio, and braced himself for a tongue-lashing about encouraging Teal’c to smoke.

“Sir? I don’t want to usurp your authority, but is it lunchtime yet? I’m asking for a friend.”

He was going to chide her for eating so soon after breakfast, then checked his watch. It was nearly 14:00 hours. Time had flown. They had been so busy having various kinds of fun, he hadn’t even thought about eating until she brought it up. His stomach rumbled a long, loud, almost obscene growl. Jackson gave him a sidelong glance that clearly asked, ‘How could you?’

“It was my stomach,” O’Neill retorted defensively.

The younger man looked at him over the tops of his glasses, scepticism written in bold strokes all over his face. There wasn’t going to be any convincing him, O’Neill knew, so he switched gears, addressing Carter.

“If madame can convince the _maitre d’_ to reassemble the zipline, I have a lovely sauvignon blanc, pheasant under glass, and an old _foie gras_ I can send over.”

“Why, Colonel,” she squealed in delight, “that’s even the proper wine pairing.” His capacity to astonish her was surprising. “I always figured you favored reds, sir.”

“Only an uncivilized savage would serve red wine with goose liver, Carter,” he replied. Jackson snorted in derision.

“Now you’re just being cruel, stringing the poor girl along,” he commented. “What’s next? Caviar?”

The thought hadn’t occurred to O’Neill. A suddenly crafty look came over his face.

“Shut up, Daniel,’ he said with a evil gleam in his eye.

A few moments later the resupply pouch sizzled over the intervening space from the other platform. O’Neill unsnapped it, and carried it over to the supply cases he’d tossed up from the rover a scant few hours earlier. Softly whistling a tuneless tune, he transferred a few items from the case to the pouch, then clicked it shut with an authoritative _snap_.

Tossing the pouch to Jackson, he untabbed the paracord and held it up as high as he could. Jackson clipped it to the line and it obediently zipped back to Carter and Teal’c. Watching Carter, O’Neill could barely suppress a snort of laughter when she opened the bag. Her face fell in spectacular fashion. 

“Uuuuh, sir? This is franks and beans,” she radioed. “And a Capri Sun.”

“Yes, Captain, it is,” he confirmed. “Make sure Teal’c gets the fruit punch; you know how much he loves his fruit punch.”

“Yessir,” she responded, sounding the slightest bit grumpy.

“Don’t be grouchy, Carter,” he admonished. “Daniel ate the pheasant before I could stop him.”

Jackson elbowed him sharply in the ribs.

“That’s a complete dick move,” he grumbled. “Fess up and tell her you’re lying.”

“She knows I’m lying,” O’Neill countered defensively. “Where in blazes could I have stashed a pheasant? Those things are as big as turkeys; it’d be like trying to hide a friggin’ giraffe.”

Jackson couldn’t take it anymore.

“Sam,” he radioed, “Jack’s lying. He’s the one who ate the pheasant.”

“Am not,” O’Neill rebutted.

“Are too.”

“Why do I feel like I’m raising two teenaged boys?,” Carter asked herself.

__________________________________

 

 

Fraiser had a busy, but very productive hour. She’d had a full set of X-rays taken on the three complete squirrel bodies and then enlarged. Isolab 2 had been converted from infectious disease quarantine to observation. Two large stainless steel tables had been wheeled in as well as a cart full of prepackaged dissection trays. 

There had been nearly thirty carcasses in various conditions ranging from the fully intact specimens to several that had been crushed and/or scissored by the iris as it closed. Happily for Fraiser, the abundance of corpses meant she could dissect at will without cutting into her supply of live specimens.

These last were contained in three large workbench-sized observation chambers in the center of the room. The bulky metal enclosures strongly resembled glass-topped metal infant’s cradles. Built into the sides were several ports with integral gloves so observers could manipulate items within the chamber. Supposedly, the chambers were airtight and paned with inch-thick leaded glass that theoretically should stop all but the most energetic subatomic particles.

There were seventy four squirrels captured alive, and they were divided more or less evenly between the three chambers. Upon being deposited in their new glass and metal homes, the creatures adopted their former indifference to any and all external stimuli, standing around in random groups, just like they were still on P8X-362. Automated sensors regulated temperature, ventilation, and monitored a dozen other conditions. 

Fraiser spent several minutes going over the enlarged X-rays, noting a number of curious differences between the devil squirrels and terrestrial rodents, wishing all the time she knew more about the animal kingdom. Some of the differences were pretty glaring, some much more subtle, and some, she was sure, would only be caught by an expert, which she was not.

She turned her attention to the carcasses, which Nurse Eve was starting to lay out in dissecting trays, starting with the most intact and moving down the scale of wholeness to the last tray, which was more or less filled with pieces. 

Fraiser moved with some trepidation. She wasn’t squeamish, far from it. No internal doctor worth their salt was squeamish; blood was blood and organs were organs, whether it be on humans, Jaffa, or two-legged chipmunks which would happily eat both humans and Jaffa.

Her hesitation was more from professionalism. She was conscious of the fact that each and every specimen was, considering the cost of matter transmission, literally worth its weight in gold. There were only so many of them. She had no room for screw-ups.

Steeling herself, she bypassed the intact corpses and began an exploratory on the largest of the body fragments. Selecting a nice comfortable #11 scalpel, she began trying to cut away and pin down the tough layers of epidermis. After a couple of fruitless passes, she changed to a pair of no.5 surgical scissors. The squirrel’s hide was surprisingly tough for such a small animal.

The stench was indescribable, and in a few minutes she began wishing her surgical mask had a nose clip so she could pinch her nostrils shut. In an academic setting, specimens were thoroughly washed, drained, squeezed out, blotted, and injected with preserving fluid of some kind. Dealing with bodies in the raw, as it were, was a whole different matter. 

In short order, the fragment was leaking blood, digestive juices, and whatever passed for lymphatic fluid on its homeworld, as well as all the standard waste products that were stored in a body. She stepped on a floor switch, kicking the ventilation fans on high, and spent a moment wondering if it would be worthwhile to just step back and let the incoming xenobiologist deal with it.

No, that just wouldn’t do. That would be uncomfortably close to slacking.

Donning a fresh pair of gloves, Fraiser dove back in, this time happier these things weren’t any bigger. The thought of being up to her elbows in a stenchy, leaky, defunct version of some offworld animal wasn’t appealing, not in the slightest. The anomalies she had noticed on the X-rays were easy to spot. Mentally, she chided herself. There was no way to know whether they were anomalies or standard physiology without further exploration. 

She was so engrossed in her task that a discreet tap on the door frame behind her sounded like an explosion. It took no imagination to guess what that meant.

An airman was standing in the doorway; she could see the vague outline of someone looming in the hallway behind him. He gave her a quick salute which she returned.

“Ma’am, General Hammond ordered me to escort this gentleman to your office. They said you’d be here.”

Fraiser gave him a quick once-over, took in his name plate and rank insignia at a glance, and tried to decide if she’d seen him before. Nope, she decided, not familiar.

“Thank you, Corporal Rakes,” she answered, thanking med school for forcing her to be observant. It was really helpful when meeting strangers on a military base, among other things.

“I’ll take it from here,” she dismissed him.

He retreated and the other man stepped into the room. He was somewhere around her age, maybe six feet tall, pudgy build, and had the muddy remains of what had once been dark brown hair, now liberally mixed with gray.

Janet Fraiser’s stock in trade was dealing with life and death on a daily basis and doing her damnedest to tip the scales in favor of life. That was the lot of all praticing medical doctors. Being at the SGC was like working the ER of a large city, amplified a dozen times, with the added plus of abnormal additions ranging from radiation burns to parasitic infestation to seeing good friends turned into robot versions of themselves. In short, she was no shrinking violet.

As the other man came into the full light of the isolab, she felt a tingle of anticipation, mixed with a slight tremor of apprehension. He gave her a friendly, comfortable smile and extended his hand for a shake.

“Dr. Fraiser?,” he said. “Frank Roylott, area 51.”

He started, then gave her a second look, more puzzled than anything, and his eyes went to her name tag, pinned to the white lab coat she habitually wore. She could see the wheels turning in his head, and wondered how long it would take to click. It didn’t take long.

“Janet?,” he asked, firmly stuck between disbelief, surprise and nervousness.

She gave him a big, genuine smile. 

“It’s been a long time, Frank.”

__________________________________

“Sir?,” Carter radioed.

“How’s them franks and beans?,” O’Neill asked with a drawl.

“Um, not so bad, sir. I think Teal’c actually liked them,” she answered.

A faint, “Indeed,” coming over the channel proved Teal’c’s endorsement of the late lunch.

“Though to be honest, I don’t think he much cared about anything past the fruit punch,” she finished.

“Told you,” O’Neill crowed in triumph. 

Jackson said nothing, simply rolled his eyes and sighed.

“Never doubted you, sir,” Carter responded. “Sir, shouldn’t we have heard back from the SGC by now?”

O’Neill had already been down this road in his own mind.

“Yes, Captain. They should have reestablished contact as soon as Castleman went through and the gate closed.”

“By dialing from their side none of the devil squirrels could get through, right? That was the whole point of shutting the gate down so fast, wasn’t it?,” she asked.

“That is pretty much it,” he admitted.

“So where does that leave us, Colonel?”

He took a moment to try to find the best way of couching the answer.

“There’s a couple of different options,” he admitted. “One: they may not be able to for… um, _reasons_.”

“Such as?,” Carter and Jackson interrupted in unison.

He looked at Jackson, then looked at Carter, then looked back at Jackson.

“...damn scientists,” he grumbled under his breath. Both of the ‘damn scientists’ kept looking at him, so he continued.

“They may be having trouble containing Castleman’s furry friends; the gate may have sustained some damage; somebody else may be dialing _in_ , so they can’t dial out.”

“Like the goa’uld?,” Carter prompted.

“It’s a possibility,’ he conceded. “According to Thor, they’re supposed to behave themselves now, but those slimy lying two-faced no-good…”

“Overdressed,” Jackson interjected.

“Overdressed,” O’Neill included, not missing a beat, “underhanded snakes in the grass may be up to dirty tricks again. We’ll see if they re-establish contact after the thirty-eight minute window,”

“That was one, sir,” Carter reminded him. “What’s two?”

“Two is something else is going on bigger than us. Maybe another field unit sustained casualties, or got in a firefight and needs support. Our name may be SG- _One_ , but it’s not SG- _Only_.”

“You’ve been waiting to use that,” Carter accused him.

O’Neill smiled proudly.

“For _weeks_ ,” he said.

“Is there a three?,” Jackson wanted to know.

O’Neill snorted.

“Sure,” he said. “Three is that this is all an elaborate ruse to get us stranded out in the middle of nowhere. At this moment, they’re welding the iris shut, and then they’ll go home and forget they ever knew us.”

“You’re such a jackass,” Jackson snapped.

“Am not,” O’Neill rebutted.

“Are too”’ Jackson shot back.

“Ok, you got me,” O’Neill admitted. “I am.”

“Was that all it took?,” Carter wondered aloud. 


	9. Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Intermittent salty language  
> Implied yuckiness, about on par with High School biology class  
> Not much really happens; might be a good time to pop out for a snack

Chapter 9

SCIENCE!

 

Roylott stared at Fraiser for a few moments, unspeaking, then ran a hand through his hair. Shock and amazement were fighting for control of his face.

“Wow,” he finally managed. “I was told to report to Dr. Fraiser. I had no idea that aaah, you were… well, I mean, how could I, really?” He was confused and a little embarrassed and consequently stumbled for words. “Obviously I didn’t know you were _you_ , you know? I mean, last time I saw you, you were at the Academy and your name wasn’t Fraiser and how did that happen anyway?”

The longer he went on, the wider Fraiser’s smile grew. She strongly suspected that if she let him ramble on long enough he might run out of air and pass out.

“Frank,” she said holding up a hand to make him pause for breath, “I got married. That’s how that usually happens.”

“Oh.” 

He seemed taken aback by the idea, as though the possibility had never occurred to him. After a moment or two to digest the notion, he seemed to make his peace with it. He looked around the room and took in some of the more unusual instruments at a glance.

“Looks like quite an interesting setup you’ve got going here,” he commented. “Not especially cozy, but I guess that… oh, my God.” His attention was suddenly grabbed by an oblong gray box resting on one of the countertops.

“Is that a Minolta CM-2002?,” he asked in awe, stepping over to run a greedy hand over the named device. “It’s so tiny. We’re still using one of the clunky old Spectronic Genisys models from the 80s. Damn thing’s bigger than my desk.”

Fraiser smiled and shook her head.

“Yes, it is,” she confirmed. “If you play your cards right, I may even let you use it.”

With a last covetous caress, he tore his attention away from the machine and looked at her again.

“Well then, what are we waiting for? By the way, I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but it smells like something died in here.”

Fraiser didn’t reply, just waved a hand at the two tables covered with dissection trays. Roylott recoiled a little in surprise. He had been enraptured by the sleek and sexy lines of the oh-so-desirable spectrophotometer; he hadn’t noticed the copious number of rodent carcasses until his attention was directed to them. 

“Uummmm, look,” he temporized, “I know I’m the new guy here, but I think it may be time to look into new janitorial staff. Between the smell and the dead rats, somethin’ just ain’t gettin’ done.” He appropriated a stool and eased onto it, keeping a weather eye on Fraiser to gauge her approval or disapproval. She gave neither. 

“So, what’s up?,” he asked. “You need a xenobiologist, and here he sits. Something big and mean, dare I hope? Preferably with lots of pointy teeth.”

Fraiser shook her head with the beginnings of a frown.

“Frank, you were a train wreck at the Academy; I see that hasn’t changed. You were also the sharpest internist I ever met, and I’m hoping that hasn’t changed, either.”

“Well, we’ll see about that,” he replied offhandedly. “So… what’s up?”

She steered him to one of the steel tables and pulled over a dissection tray holding an intact devil squirrel.

“The ‘rats’, as you called them, are what’s up,” she explained. 

He picked up a probe and repositioned the tray to get a better look.

“Just a garden-variety chipmunk,” he commented. “Don’t see what the big deal…,” he trailed off into silence as a moment’s cursory examination dispelled the idea that this was a garden-variety _anything_.

“Holy crap,’ he muttered under his breath while moving the creature around, then looked up. “Gloves. You have a spare set of gloves?”

“Box, right by your elbow,” she answered.

He glanced down and shied back from the green and white box of examination gloves like it was full of snakes, then gingerly extracted a pair and stretched them over his hands, giving the cuffs an exaggerated _snap_. Fraiser began to wonder if this was a mistake or not. She was willing to suspend judgement, but not indefinitely. 

Roylott put on a pair of glasses, then began examining the specimen in earnest, flexing the legs, rotating the neck, palpating the stomach, and checking the articulation of the joints. He kept up a running commentary of _wow_ s and _oh, man_ s and _Holy cow_ s under his breath. After a couple of minutes of this, he looked at Fraiser.

“This isn’t a terrestrial animal,” he said accusingly.

“If it was, we’d need a vet, not a xenobiologist,” she retorted.

He cocked his head and stared off into the distance for a second.

“Vet… right,” he agreed, then continued probing.

At the end of ten minutes, he peeled off the gloves and took off his glasses, putting them in a shirt pocket.

“I don’t suppose you’ve done x-rays yet?,” he asked, sceptically.

“And blow-ups,” she answered with a hurt look, leading the way to the illumination box. 

Snapping the light on, they were looking at a half dozen enlargements, showing the defunct squirrel’s skeleton in all its monochrome glory. Roylott pored over these with the same attention he had shown the body.

“Hmmm. Not a mutation. Internal organ arrangement is the same as true bipeds: horizontal orientation, not vertical. No sign of vestigial fore-limbs. This thing is more birdlike in structure than _rodentia_. Elongated premaxilla. Wow, look at that olfactory cavity; that’s three or four times bigger than most _mammalia_. Same proportion as predator animals, not prey. Hmmm. Oh, definitely not _rodentia_. Schnikes, look at that dentition!”

“Schnikes?,” Fraiser repeated incredulously. “Is that proper medical terminology now?”

“No,” he admitted, “but it sounds a lot better than ‘Holy Shit.’”

Put that way, she could not disagree.

“Here, give a look, boss,” he said, leading the way back to the specimen table. Gently inserting the probe between the animal’s jaws, he levered them open. In place of the large gnawing incisors that true rodents had, the devil squirrel had a row of triangular teeth, top and bottom, which showed minute serrations under magnification. There were two sets of molars at the rear of the jaw.

“It’s obviously an omnivore,” Roylott said. “The structure of the molars is enough to say that for sure, but those others… They look like miniature shark’s teeth, and I bet they work about as well as the full-sized ones owned by sharks do.” He crossed back to the x-ray viewer.

“Thickness and angle of the jaw… man, oh man, look at those muscle attachment points. I wouldn’t bet against this thing being able to chew through steel. Doc, I take back anything bad I ever said about these things, smell or no smell.”

“We have had reports of them chewing through a leather boot,” she commented.

“It’s a good thing these whats-its are so small,” he said. “I’d hate to meet a dog-sized one if it was in a bad mood. By the way, do they have an official designation?”

“Not as yet,” Fraiser admitted.

Roylott carefully watched her through slitted eyes.

“You mentioned ‘reports’,” he reminded her. “Field units encountered these?”

Fraiser was torn between being fully candid and how much Roylott actually needed to know. It would have been really helpful, she thought, if General Hammond had addressed this when she’d mentioned bringing in an outsider. On the other hand, she rebuffed herself, she had made it a point to bring up Roylott’s full security clearances when pitching Hammond the idea. That kind of made it her call.

Frank was from Area 51, a facility not famous for being entirely honest and aboveboard. The SGC had butted heads with Area 51 personnel and their sponsors in the Pentagon practically from day one. If some of the more unscrupulous elements of the Air Force wanted to get a mole inside the SGC, Roylott was a golden opportunity to do just that.

Balanced against that was her recollection of him from their past association at the Academy. He had been an indifferent student; not sloppy, but definitely careless. While his methodology may have tended toward the unorthodox, his results were incontrovertible, and he had never ever had even a whiff of compromised ethics. On that point, he had been an oak: his integrity was bedrock solid.

At some point, you have to decide whether to trust people or not. 

She decided to trust.

“We have an offworld team,” she admitted.

He looked at her for a moment, then massaged the bridge of his nose.

“Janet,” he said gently, “I know what it is you people do here. A lot of the reports and most of the specimens that come out of Cheyenne Mountain cross my desk. You’re not spilling the beans about anything I don’t already know.”

“All right,” she said, taking a deep breath and wishing she had her clipboard on hand. It served much the same purpose as Linus’ security blanket.

“Approximately eighteen hours ago one of our field units was attacked and pinned down by a large group of these creatures.”

“How large?,” he interrupted. “It’d be pretty hard to imagine an SG team not being able to shoot their way through a bunch of rats, no matter how sharp their teeth are.”

“No idea how many,” she confessed. “Tens of millions, at the very least. Possibly hundreds of millions.”

Roylott whistled in surprise.

Fraiser went on to outline the details of SG-1’s situation. When she’d finished, he ran a hand through his hair and slid back further on his stool.

“Mighty interesting place you’ve got here,” he stated, looking all around the isolab. “So we’re supposed to find out anything and everything that might be helpful, right?”

Fraiser nodded. Roylott nodded at her nodding. They looked like a pair of bobbleheads.

“All right,” he burbled, rubbing his hands together. “If someone will find me a lab coat, let’s start with that olfactory cavity.” He crossed back over to the x-rays and started examining them again.

 

 

“Sir?,” Carter’s voice crackled over the radio. “It’s well past the thirty eight minute window.”

This was not news to O’Neill. It felt like he’d been checking his watch every 45 seconds since Castleman had left; he simply hadn’t wanted to be the one to mention it. That would’ve felt like bad luck.

“Yes, Captain, I believe it is,” he affirmed. “Now since I know you’re going to ask me what to do next, I’ll get that out of the way by telling you up front: I have no idea.” 

He wasn’t prepared for her response.

“You can shoot straight with me, sir,” she confided.

“Carter, I have no clue,” he confessed.

“You try to gloss over it, Colonel, I’ll see right through you.”

“Not the first hint of a notion,” he declared.

“You can’t pull the wool over my eyes,” she reminded him.

“I’m like a calf looking at a shiny new gate, Carter.”

“I can’t be hoodwinked, bamboozled, or hornswoggled, sir,” she warned.

“Lights are on, but nobody’s home,” O’Neill pointed at his head.

“Trying to complicate matters won’t throw me off,” she rebutted. “Just be honest, sir. Are we stuck?”

He sighed, thoroughly exasperated, then decided that a good front was better than no front.

“No, Carter, I know exactly what to do,” he assured her, in a bold, jovial tone he didn’t honestly feel. “Don’t know where we’re going, but there’s no sense being late,” he quoted, _sotto voce_.

Her answering smile was pure gold.

“That’s good, sir, because frankly, I was starting to get worried.” 

O’Neill briefly considered finding something to throw at her, then decided it was better not to.

“All right, group,” he announced. “For whatever reason, Hammond isn’t, can’t, or won’t get ahold of us. Therefore, I’m assuming we’re on our own, at least for now. Obviously, that could change at any moment. It could also be the _status quo_ for the next six months.”

He was really hoping that wouldn’t be the case, but it was best to be prepared for all eventualities.

“Carter, you’re back on finding us a way to the gate. Once again, keep ordnance expenditures as low as possible. There’s got to be something really simple we’re missing here; find it. Teal’c, I’m sure Carter could use the benefit of your hundred-odd years’ experience at blowing things up. If nothing else, you throw a grenade farther than anyone else I’ve ever seen, and that’s worth a place on the team all by itself.”

“Daniel, the Earth gate may or may not be compromised. When we make a break for it, we may have to hustle, and I don’t want to waste any time dialing a gate that won’t connect. Give me some alternate options in case we have to go somewhere other than home. P3X-797 might not be a bad place to start, and Madrona might also be worth considering. I believe both planets are pretty well disposed toward us at the moment. OK, people, make stuff happen!”

Coming from anyone else, it might have sounded forced and pretentious. Hell, it _was_ pretentious, but it was their kind of pretentious, firmly rooted in their belief that ‘impossible’ was just a word in the dictionary between ‘imposition’ and ‘impostor’.

“Oh, and Carter?,” he radioed.

“Sir?,” she responded.

“‘Hornswoggled’? Really?”

“You have no room to talk, Mr. Calf Looking at a Shiny New Gate,” came her retort.

 

 

“Why the olfactory cavity?,” Fraiser asked, handing Roylott a spare lab coat. He shrugged it on, then spent a moment checking the pens clipped in the breast pocket. Apparently they met with his approval because he nodded before answering.

“Despite differences in structure, these things are similar enough to terrestrial rodents to use that as a good baseline for comparison.” 

He re-appropriated the stool, scooting it closer to the x-ray light box. 

“Even things that don’t track exactly, like the molars, are a pretty close analog. The really anomalous anomalies are those wicked front teeth and that olfactory cavity.”

He shifted in his seat, adopting a professorial air as Fraiser studied the x-rays.

“In terrestrial species, the predatory animal has a considerably larger sinus area than do the prey species, while the prey have a larger maxillary area. The presence of grinding molars _should_ preclude this being a predator species, but those incisors… those really open up a huge field for speculation. You see, rodents have big-ass gnawing incisors for eating nuts and seeds and chewing bark and… and eating more nuts, I guess. Those teeth belong in a predatory species that _doesn’t_ have molars for grinding plant matter like these do.”

“Aren’t predatory species large?,” Fraiser interjected. “At least cat or dog-sized?”

“To a certain extent that’s true,” Roylott admitted. “But there are enough exceptions to keep it from being a rule. If you remember those grody films from grade-school science class, ants and aphids and grasshoppers all eat the hell out of each other.”

“Ok, good point,” she conceded. “So size doesn’t enter in to it.”

“C’mon, Fraiser,” he prodded, stumbling slightly over the unfamiliar last name. “That was a perfect time to go for the classic, ‘Size matters not’.”

She favored him with a look that was not calculated to give warm fuzzies. It was one she had taken years to perfect.

“Yoda?,” he suggested weakly. “Jedi master? Small, green…? Nevermind.”

Clearing his throat, he turned back to the x-ray.

“So, in this case, the olfactory cavity is something that doesn’t fit, metaphorically speaking. For the most part, predators hunt by scent, so they need a big box to keep all that sniffing gear in. Prey animals need scent receptors primarily to locate food, secondarily to detect predators, so, since food is smellier than predators, theirs tend to be smaller by half to two-thirds in comparable-sized species.”

“So,” Fraiser summarized, “if they aren’t a predatory species, why all the ‘sniffing gear’, as you called it.” 

“Why, indeed? Nature generally doesn’t make mistakes. At least not like this.”

“It’s being used for something else,” she stated.

“Bingo,” he affirmed. “No idea what, but something else. We’ve got to find out what that something else is. Dissection City, here we come.”

Roylott spent several minutes pinning the splayed squirrel in place before he started cutting. As any high school biology student who actually paid attention to dissection labs could tell you, the combination of razor-sharp scalpel and floppy specimen is not a good one, generally being considered equal to the combination of scrambled eggs and peanut butter. Each is good on its own, but putting them together results in disaster.

He made two passes with the scalpel before discovering the freakishly tough skin, just as Fraiser had. She handed him the surgical scissors and he began delicately snipping away and pinning back layers of epidermis. Fraiser hovered over his shoulder. The specimen she had chosen to work on had only been the lower half of a squirrel, so she was getting her first look at the head and thorax at the same time as Roylott. 

However odd it might seem, the two of them had slipped back into the easy familiarity that had marked their college days at the Air Force Academy. Though Fraiser would never admit it, she had been apprehensive upon discovering that the Dr. Roylott at Area 51 had been her old classmate. 

Something was institutionally wrong at Area 51, something that contaminated everything it came in contact with. People who had been upright, honest, and trustworthy were gradually tainted, bit by bit, drip by drip, until they were almost unrecognizable. Perhaps there was a corruption in the water which was anathema to ethics, or perhaps it was something much worse, something which left an intangible stain on the soul.

It had come as a relief to see that whatever that was, be it malevolent intent or just the corrosive aura of politics, seemed to have passed Roylott by. He was the same quirky, offbeat personality he had been more years ago than she wanted to think about.

He sat back for a moment and slipped his glasses on.

“This thing is probably going to bleed and leak all over the place. I’m hoping you’ve got plenty of gauze pads around here.”

“Give me a sec,” she said, patting his shoulder, then went to the intercom and paged Eve to the isolab.

“All right, cowboy,” she reassured Roylott, “help is on the way. You may continue.”

He picked up the probe and began gently moving muscle tissue out of the way to get a better view of the internal organs. Nurse Eve slipped unobtrusively into the room while both of the doctors’ attention was on the dissection tray. The first hint Fraiser had of her arrival was an almost unnoticeable puff of wind at her elbow. Accustomed as she was to the nurse’s almost silent comings and goings, she betrayed no surprise, but started giving instructions.

“We’ll need forceps and gauze, then find the smallest hemostats we’ve got.”

“I don’t know where the forceps are,” Roylott said, still staring at the tray, not having noticed the nurse’s arrival.

“Yes, doctor,” Eve acknowledged.

Roylott flinched back in surprise, almost jamming the probe into his own hand.

“Goddamn ninja nurses,” he grumbled under his breath, turning his attention back to the squirrel carcass, which had started seeping blood onto the clay lining the tray bottom.

He clipped the diaphragm loose and eased the muscular band aside.

“All right,” he said, with just a hint of triumph. “Looks like pretty standard stuff. Cardiac and pulmonary systems are recognizable; Digestive tract is a little different, but nothing too outlandish; I’m guessing that’s a liver… it looks like it should be a liver. We have kidney-like structures, and I’m comfortable saying that this fella is, in fact, a fella. Interesting. Genital structure doesn’t appear to be connected to waste-removal system like in most mammals. I’m guessing that, as with birds, you get everything all at once.”

“Are those pancreas?,” Fraiser asked from over his shoulder. Eve reappeared with a surgical tray. The low lights of the isolab gleamed off the silvered chrome of doctor’s tools laid out in a neat row with machinelike exactness.

“No way,” Roylott rebutted, shaking his head. “It’s too huge.”

He used a forceps to grab a wad of gauze and sopped up blood and some of the less mentionable substances from the dissection tray. Fraiser double-checked that the vent fan was at its highest setting. The stench was making her eyes water.

“What else could it be?,” she asked. “The spleen is right where it belongs. That’s got to be all pancreas, Frank.”

“Good Lord. What could they be eating that would require that much insulin?,” he asked.

“Terrain where they came from is predominantly forest and scrub grass,” she answered. “Nothing in a purely vegetable diet would account for…”

“Whoa,” Roylott interrupted. “Hold on a tick. This isn’t attached; at least it’s not attached to digestive stuff. Have you got a magnifier?”

As if by magic, Eve appeared, lugging a large lighted magnifier. She plopped the weighted base on the table and expertly slid the armature onto the base, plugging the power cord in and snapping the light on in one easy motion, then stepped away.

“Thank you, Nurse Ninja,” Roylott said, rocking back in moderate surprise.

“How much does one of those set you back?,” he asked, adjusting the magnifier lower.

“The light?,” Fraiser asked in confusion. “Surely even you have one of those.”

“Not the light, the ninja,” Roylott replied in a cartoonish voice. “Lights are a dime a dozen, ninjas are much rarer.”

“They’re very funny creatures,” Fraiser replied, giving Eve a wink. “You can’t just buy one; you have to earn their trust, usually with coffee and snacks.” 

The nurse made no comment, just gave Fraiser a big grin before retreating.

“Ok, we’ve settled that that can’t be pancreas because it isn’t attached to the gut”, he mumbled, returning his attention to the spatchcocked squirrel. “So who are you, and what do you do?,” he asked the mystery organ.

He eased the stomach and liver as far to one side as they would stretch, and adjusted the angle of the light to shine in more directly. The defunct squirrel was almost out of room to hide mysteries in; Roylott was already working against the backside of the ribcage, and the only thing on the other side of that was the spine.

“You’re not here for no reason,” he muttered under his breath, “sooo… Gotcha!”

“What is it?,” Fraiser asked, leaning further over his shoulder to get a better look in the magnifier.

Roylott was a doctor first and a scientist second, but underneath everything else was still a male human. Having Janet Fraiser essentially draped over his back like a comfortable old coat was highly distracting, but he managed to focus his attention long enough to explain.

“Look very closely at the back side of the organ,” he instructed. “Do you see them?”

“It looks like filaments of some kind,” Fraiser commented. “So tiny; no wonder we missed them first time through. Where does it lead?”

“Over to the skin and out…,” he trailed off into silence, then swore a mighty oath.

“Sonovabitch, it’s a gland, not an organ ,” he declared. “That explains the oversized olfactory cavity.”

Fraiser’s face showed confusion; she didn’t make the same intuitive leap.

“Endocrine glands,” he explained. “Hormones, pheromones, whatever they are in this species. You gotta have a big sender,” he tapped the gland for emphasis, “and a big receiver,” he finished, poking the elongated nose.

“Wow,” she said, borrowing one of his favorite terms. “If that gland is that big in proportion to the body, then…”

“...that could be their primary means of communication,” he finished the thought. “Man alive, I wish we had some of these whole and living to experiment on.”

“Well, now that you mention it...,” she trailed off sheepishly. The pleasure of their renewed acquaintance and subsequent events and discoveries had driven the observation chambers completely out of her mind. “There might be a few _somewhere_ around here,” she said, indicating the metal benchlike enclosures on the other side of the room. He gave her a thoroughly disgruntled look. 

“That would have been helpful to know about an hour ago.”

She shrugged in reply. Being embarrassed wouldn’t accomplish anything.

“Well, no harm, no foul,” he allowed. “It’s just as well we started with dissections, else we’d likely never have seen that gland.”

“Why don’t you come over and I’ll introduce you?,” she asked, taking his elbow and ushering him to the nearest bench. Eve remained near the dissecting table, unobtrusive, yet ready to swoop in at a moment’s notice if needed.

The observation chamber was lighted from the inside and plainly exhibited the creatures as being intensely occupied by standing around and doing nothing. They showed no more interest in the gray walls of the isolation creche than they had the brown walls of the cardboard box.

“Not a really excitable bunch, are they?,” he asked. “Do they do anything else?”

“That’s pretty much the only thing I’ve seen them do,” she confirmed. “According to our field team, they can be really energetic, but I haven’t seen proof of that. The only exception was in the embarcation room immediately after they were caught and put in boxes. The were pretty agitated then.”

“That’s reasonable enough,” he replied. “I’d be pretty ticked if I came to an alien world and was immediately stuffed in a box.”

Roylott cleared his throat and moved over to the chamber, flipping open one of the side ports and sliding his hand into the manipulator glove. He casually waved his hand around, moving as far in each direction as the glove’s jointed segments would allow. He nonchalantly brushed several of the creatures first one way, then the other, and none appeared to get even slightly upset at this.

“Well,” he allowed, “as far as extraterrestrial life forms go, this is not exactly ‘E.T.’”

A quirky thought hit.

“I don’t suppose you tried M&Ms?,” he asked irreverently.

“No I didn’t,” she replied. “#1, you know better than that, and #2, it was Reese’s Pieces, not M&Ms.”

“Good catch,” he complimented, giving her a pat on the shoulder. “You’re improving, Fraiser, there may be hope for you yet.”

He slowly walked around the enclosure, watching the squirrels closely. X-rays and dissections were great for gaining knowledge, but living specimens were another thing entirely. Call it a vibe, or mojo, or _ju-ju,_ or any of a dozen other names, static examples could never compare to living flesh and blood for observation. 

“So what _have_ you been feeding them?,” he asked.

“Well, nothing,” Fraiser admitted.

He took a quick look through all three observation windows, then gave her a sharp glance.

“How long have they been here?”

“About two hours,” she answered, with just a little hint of defensiveness in her tone.

“I’m not suggesting you violated their Geneva Convention rights, Janet,” he commented easily. “But look: no urine, no feces. Nothing to show they’ve been in there that long. Does that suggest anything to you?”

Fraiser thought it over for a moment, then shrugged.

“They must have an incredibly efficient metabolism,” she finally offered.

“Given that the smaller the organism, the faster the metabolic rate, I’d bet they’re starving. No wonder they aren’t very energetic.” He turned around and stroked the glass top of the observation port sympathetically. “Don’t worry, little guys, daddy’s gonna make sure the mean lady feeds you.”

Fraiser snorted and Roylott gave her a lopsided smile.

“What?,” he asked innocently.

“All right, Mr. Xenobiologist, what do I feed them? I can’t exactly go up to the commissary and ask for a bag of acorns,” she replied sarcastically. He mulled it over for a moment.

“Anything suitable for terrestrial rodents shouldn’t kill them,” he said finally.

“We do our best to keep the rats _out_ , Frank. We don’t keep Rat Chow here. I’m going to have to file a requisition and get a purchase order and then hope there’s a pet store near here that’ll take a government p.o. This is going to take a while.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” he grumbled, fishing in his pants pocket and digging out his wallet. He peeled a twenty dollar bill out of the middle fold and handed it to her. “Just send an airman to Wal-Mart or whatever else is closer. They keep stuff for hamsters and gerbils in the pet section. Make sure he gets enough for everybody. The babies is hungry.”

She looked at the cash for a moment before taking it, shaking her head the whole time.

“I’m pretty sure there’s regs against this.”

“That’s fine, doctor,” he said in mock anger, pointing at the isolation creches. “You march right over there and look them in their cute little beady eyes and their soft quivering whiskers, and then you tell them there will not be so much as a crumb of cheese until Uncle Sam’s paper-pushers are satisfied. **I DARE YOU**.” 

She dissolved in laughter.

“All right, you win, Frank.”

“Hey, before you go?,” he interjected.

She gave him a questioning look.

“Ok, we know that Junior Brown over there,” he pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the dissection table, “is male. Any ideas on how the gender breakdown goes for the rest?”

“I can tell you we have seventy-four of them,” she replied. “Beyond that, I can’t tell you anything about gender, race, or political affiliation. They are here, and that is all I will say.”

“Good enough,” he responded. “Ninja Nurse and I will work on that while you’re gone. Now skedaddle; the kids are hungry.”

Fraiser left for Hammond’s office, still not sure if Roylott had been a good idea or not. She was in danger of getting whiplash from all the head-shaking she was doing. On the other hand, his straightforward candor and easygoing goofiness were a breath of fresh air.

 

As the sharp click of her heels retreated down the hallway, Roylott laced his fingers together and elaborately cracked his knuckles.

“All right, Ninja _gaijin_ ,” he said, “let’s get… no. No, this isn’t going to work.”

He eyed the nurse speculatively. No name tag. Crap.

“What’s your name?,” he inquired. She looked a little bit surprised, but covered it well.

“Palmer,” she answered. “Eve Palmer.”

“Well, Eve Palmer,” he extended his hand, “ I’m Frank Roylott, and I’m very pleased to meet you.” 

Eve took the proffered hand, not knowing whether to expect the delicately hesitant handshake of the introvert, or the crushing grip of the knuckle-dragging he-man extrovert. It was neither. His hands were in that pleasant Mama-Bear middle ground between too soft and too rough; he had a grip that was firm and businesslike and wasn’t going to rearrange the bones in her hand. 

“Nurse Palmer, I hope you aren’t given to histrionics at the sight of mice, because there’s only one chair in the room, and I will be standing on it.”

 

 

O’Neill had stripped off his BDU jacket and was doing his best to find a comfortable spot to rest his sore backside. Legend held that Michelangelo had once gained inspiration for a sculpture by sleeping on a block of marble, but O’Neill had gained nothing but a crick in his neck and a burning desire to see his own bed again. They had been stuck on these platforms for nearly a day, and no matter what he tried, the stone wasn’t getting any softer.

He steeled himself and shifted his weight from one cheek to the other, biting back the urge to groan. He’d never admit it to anyone else, but the years were beginning to catch up with him. Not in any major way, he noted with some pride. He could still run rings around many of the young whippersnappers on base, but there were getting to be more and more of the young whippersnappers, and fewer and fewer of the… old guys?

 _Am I an old guy?_ , came the inevitable question.

He sternly ordered himself to excise those words from his vocabulary. He wasn’t ‘old’. He was ‘seasoned’. 

A moment later, he sternly ordered himself to excise ‘seasoned’ as well.

 _Food_ was ‘seasoned’, not people.

Facts, however, were stubborn things. He knew full well he wasn’t as fast as he used to be. Various aches and pains, the way it took a couple of steps to get the kinks worked out of his joints, and worst of all, how it took a couple of days to bounce back from things he used to recover from by taking a two-hour nap.

He wasn’t ‘old’.

He wasn’t ‘seasoned’.

But he also wasn’t getting any younger. It was time to start giving that some thought. In the meantime, he could always invoke the Ric Flair mantra, which he mumbled under his breath.

“What was that?,” Jackson asked, irritated at being interrupted while trying to recall half-memorized gate addresses.

“Youth and vigor are no match for age and treachery,” O’Neill repeated.

Jackson frowned.

“Are you trying out new slogans for those motivational posters that keep appearing in the commissary?”

“Yeah, something like that,” O’Neill answered.

“Well, it beats the heck out of the ‘Fly, Fight, Win’ one.”

The comment didn’t seem to need a reply, so he let it go. His problem, more than anything else, more than aches and pains, more even than cold hard stone on his perennially dusty bum, was boredom. He would have to be careful to not let that slide into something else.

Looking over at the other platform, he could see Carter and Teal’c deep in earnest conversation. Carter had field stripped her MP5 and was cleaning it like the responsible, conscientious airman that she was. O’Neill briefly considered following suit, but Jackson had only put about a dozen rounds through it this morning and it hadn’t been used since. He stood up and stalked to the platform’s edge, unobtrusively massaging his sore backside, desperate for _something_ to do.

“This sucks,” he announced out loud.

“Any other pearls of wisdom you feel like sharing?,” Jackson asked acidly, still irritated at the interruption. O’Neill ignored him.

“One thing that’s been bothering me about this whole scenario just fell into place,” he went on as though Jackson hadn’t spoken.

“ _One_ thing?,” the archaeologist pestered sarcastically. “Just one thing is bothering you?”

“This is like the old Charlton Heston movie _Empire of the Ants_ ,” O’Neill said, giving his fellow platform-dweller a sidelong glance.*

Jackson looked thoughtful for a moment, frowning, with forehead creased.

“The only Charlton Heston movies I know either have apes or Roman chariots,” he said finally.

“Same era,” O’Neill reassured with a easy wave of the hand.

Jackson was pretty thoroughly uninterested in O’Neill’s meanderings down the memory lane of movie lore, but he resigned himself to his fate. He peeled off his boonie hat and started digging through his rucksack in search of his missing favorite bandana.

“So how is this similar?,” he asked, getting even more aggressively uninterested. “Was he stuck on an alien planet surrounded by man-eating chipmunks?”

“Oh, no,” O’Neill replied offhandedly. “That didn’t come along until _The Omega Man_ at the very earliest. No, in this one, he was a nasty misogynist type who built a coffee plantation in South America with his own two hands. Carved it out of the jungle himself.”

“I’m not seeing the connection,” Jackson groused.

O’Neill gave him the look that said, ‘Don’t rush me’, and continued.

“So he sends off to New Orleans for a mail order bride and the first half of the movie is them hashing out their relationship.”

“Still no connection, unless you’re referring to things you’ve forbidden me to talk about, which would make you a _douche_ of the first magnitude,” Jackson commented, finding his long-lost bandana. 

O’Neill favored him with a venomous look. 

“Well, things go from bad to worse, and at this point they both decide it’s best for the girl to give up and go back to America,” he explained.

“Much like _I_ would like to give up and go back to America,” Jackson interjected. “At last, some relevance.”

“Just as she’s about to pack up and take off,” O’Neill went on, ignoring the interruption, “they get word that there’s a humongous horde of soldier ants tearing through the jungle, headed right for Heston’s plantation.” He waited for another sarcastic comment, but was met with silence, as Jackson was busy tying the bandana on his head.

“So, they’re TRAPPED on this plantation, SURROUNDED by zillions of man-eating ants,” he said, emphasizing the relevant words outlandishly enough that the devil squirrels below them would get the point, if only they understood English.

Jackson finished fiddling with his bandana and gave the other man a blank look.

“Jack, if you get anywhere near a point, feel free to make it.”

“I suppose I could draw you a picture, if I could borrow one of your crayons,” O’Neill snarked back. “But that’s beside the point. Heston had to get the girl, save his plantation, and get rid of the ants.”

“Well, did he?,” Jackson asked, fighting back the tiniest scintilla of interest.

“Oh, Daniel, Charlton Heston _always_ got the girl,” O’Neill explained in an exasperated tone.

“Jack, I could care less about the girl. Did he get rid of the ants?”

Having piqued his companion’s interest, O’Neill was more than willing to mess with him a little. He struck a picturesque pose, thinking intently, as he rubbed his chin.

“Hmmm, now that you mention it, I really don’t recall,” he goaded Jackson, who was visibly disgusted.

“So you drag up a fifty-year-old movie, butcher the plot, and now you can’t remember how it ends? What’s next? Tell jokes you’ve forgotten the punchlines to?”

“Ah, as it happens, you jogged my memory,” O’Neill said facetiously. 

Jackson arched his eyebrows and tried on his most innocent questioning look.

“One of the improvements Heston’d made trying to make the girl happy was to dam up a medium-sized river and build a homemade hydroelectric rig so they could have electric lights. He finally realized that he wasn’t going to be able to save the plantation, ‘cos the ants were already wrecking it, so he decides to dynamite the dam and flood the whole area.”

“Did it work?,” Jackson asked, curious in spite of himself.

“Like a charm,” O’Neill said with a smile. “‘Course it wasn’t that easy. Very tense, very dramatic, will-he, won’t-he kind of stuff. Lots of stomping around, covered in rubber ants; you know how cheesy disaster flicks can be. If I remember right, he even lost his matches, or they got wet or something. Anyway, he wound up having to set the dynamite off by shooting it.”

“Soooo,” Jackson said slowly, making a great show of painstakingly scanning the horizon. “I don’t see any rivers around here. How is this helpful?”

“Daniel,” O’Neill said with a wounded look, “I never said it would be helpful. I said it had been bothering me.”

Jackson didn’t bother replying. Instead, he swept the meticulously-tied bandana from his head, balled it up, and threw it at the older man.

O’Neill was saved from having to respond by a burst of static from the radio.

“Colonel?,” Carter’s pleading voice came through the radio. He looked to the other platform. She had apparently finished cleaning her weapon and reassembled it, as it was nowhere in sight. She was standing, legs crossed at the ankles, bouncing up and down slightly, and giving him an imploring look that carried clearly across the distance.

“Dr. Jackson,” he announced. “I think you and the tree sloths are up, and judging by Carter’s look, you’d better make it good.”

 

*NOTE: O’Neill is misremembering his movie. _Empire of the Ants_ was a 70s era b-movie schlock-fest. The movie in question is the 1954 release _The Naked Jungle_ , starring Charlton Heston and Eleanor Parker, a film which, sadly, did not live up to its title, since nobody got undressed.

 

 

 


	10. Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The salty language continues unabated.  
> Biology is discussed in a clinical setting (sort of).  
> Things transpire.

CHAPTER 10

In Which A Plan Begins To Form

 

General Hammond stood in the cathedral-like embarcation room and stared at the stargate, eyes roaming along the delicate lines that traced over its surface. It was, he mused, entirely too easy to get so caught up in what happened at the SGC that they took the ancient device for granted. At moments like this, dark and inactive, when the carved lines and reliefs covering the stone ring were illumined by the harsh fluorescent lighting, its absolute and utter _alienness_ was almost repulsive. It was not a thing of this world; not a thing that the mind of mankind would, could, or should have ever devised.

A lot of history had been made in this room, he knew; both the best and worst of humanity had been on display on this humble patch of concrete. Time and again the airmen of this installation had proved their mettle, had been the bulwark that kept Earth safe, had laid down their lives to protect a planet that slumbered on in blissful unconsciousness. 

There hadn’t been an owners manual that came with the stargate. No friendly yellow ‘Stargate for Dummies’ they could get from the library. They had been on their own as mankind had taken its first fumbling steps out into a universe that had proved much more hostile than even the most fevered imaginings of science fiction foretold.

Truth be told, Hammond was still quite ambivalent about the whole undertaking. He had made his peace with the idea that the die was cast, and they had to do their best with the hand they were dealt. Still, sometimes he fervently wished he could wake up and discover this had all been a bad dream and he was still a month away from retirement. 

He could write a book about his weird dream and make millions. Who knew? There was always the possibility of movie deals, tv spinoffs, and the inevitable action figures, lunch boxes, and t-shirts. Then, he could have the cushy retirement he’d always hoped for, but never seemed destined to enjoy.

He shook his head. Sometimes, the gate seemed to have the most unnerving effect on him, making him think about things no sane Air Force general should think about. The airmen nearby interpreted the head-shaking and scowling as dissatisfaction with the progress of the repair crew, but nothing could have been further from the truth. Siler’s team had worked like madmen and had almost completed their task, an hour ahead of schedule. 

Scorched electrical conduit had been torn out, fried copper wire as thick as a man’s forearm had been cut away, and the damaged row of shunt-trips had been hammered off their housings. These last had had so much excess current run through them that instead of tripping, like the giant circuit breakers that they were, they had simply melted, a feat which their manufacturer had claimed was impossible. 

Demolition was easy. It was always rebuilding which was time-consuming. Fortunately, everything which they needed was right at hand. The Air Force had learned that lesson the hard way in the program’s earliest days, and never again would they be caught flat-footed, waiting two weeks for a replacement part to be manufactured and shipped to Cheyenne Mountain. In a pinch, Siler could rebuild everything except the gate itself with what he had on hand under the mountain.

Hammond was getting itchy feet, not just to regain contact with SG-1, but there were also other teams off world who had contact schedules to keep, and also extractions to make. God forbid one of them ran into trouble while the gate was down. His stomach turned acid at the thought of hanging his people out to dry. The notion was nauseous enough when it happened on Earth; having it happen on an alien world was unthinkable.

“Almost done, General,” Siler reported, voice echoing in the cavernous room. He was perched atop a rolling ladder, using some kind of handheld tool to check connections in one of the superconductors. There was a bright light behind him, so he was only visible to Hammond as a black blob, suspended in the air.

“Capacitor bank B, Joe. Power up to 50%,” Siler said to the airman who was manning the power control board by the newly reinstalled shunt-trips.

“50%, aye,” Joe responded.

Siler studied the readout. Power briefly spiked up to 54% before settling back down to 50%. Worrisome, but not critical.

“Power up to 75%,” he continued.

“75%, aye,” the dutiful Joe intoned.

The power level on the meter slowly rose to 75% and stayed there, making Siler much happier. Spikes were _no bueno_ in his world; spikes meant something was wrong, and he didn’t like wrong. Wrong had a tendency to muss his hair, and get him hurt.

“Power to 100%, and don’t say ‘aye’, Joe. You’re not a sailor.”

“100%, okey-dokey, Master Sergeant Siler, suh.”

Joe could be a smartass at times.

The power levels climbed up to 100% in a slow, steady arc. Siler nodded, satisfied. Then, they kept climbing in the same slow, steady arc and his satisfaction vanished. The capacitor bank started humming, buzzing, then whining. Just like with people, whining in capacitors is not a good thing.

“SHUT IT DOWN!,” Siler yelled, then bailed off the ladder from ten feet up, preferring the drop to possible electrocution.

As Joe was reaching for the master cutoff switch, the capacitor bank erupted in a shower of white-hot sparks. Raw electricity arced from the capacitors to the superconducting elements and the chevrons briefly glowed with the sullen red of a partially powered gate. A heartbeat later, the cutoff took effect and the embarkation room plunged into Stygian darkness.

“Is everybody all right?,” Hammond’s bellow cut the darkness.

One by one, the airmen in the room sounded off, affirming their status. Hammond mentally counted them one by one, comparing the tally to his recollections in the moment before darkness fell. Only one unaccounted for.

“Siler?,” he rapped out, voice tight with worry for the injury-prone sergeant.

“Here, sir,” came the response, allowing Hammond to relax a little. “Working on the emergency lighting, sir. It should have kicked on automatically.”

There was a loud **SNAP** , and suddenly the emergency lights bathed the cavernous room in a hazy scarlet glow. In the dim light, he could see Siler worming his way out from behind a service panel, and marveled at the sergeant’s encyclopedic knowledge of seemingly every system in the complex.

“What happened, Sergeant?,” he quizzed the noncom.

“Capacitor B sustained overload damage, sir. It didn’t show up during the preliminary tests, only during manual power-up.”

“Isn’t there any way to check for that, sergeant?,” he asked.

“You just witnessed the check, sir,” Siler answered, taking his glasses off and blowing dust from the lenses. “If that had happened under full power during a gate dial-up, this mountain would be a puddle of superheated plasma.”

“How long to repair it?,” Hammond wanted to know.

“We have to get that casing cooled off, first, sir. Once that’s done, it should take about twenty minutes to replace the capacitors. We’re still under the four hour estimate, General.”

“Then get on it Sergeant,” Hammond growled. As Siler turned away, Hammond followed it up with a gentler, “And for Pete’s sake, Siler, be careful.”

Siler stood stock still for a second, as though the idea had never occurred to him.

“Yes, sir,” he finally said, before rushing off to find the electronic equivalent of a wet blanket to throw over the red-hot capacitor bank.

 

“All right, Palmer,” Roylott announced, “while your boss is gone, we’re going to get a count on all these little furries, by gender. The easiest way to do that is by picking the up and turning them over, like so.”

He demonstrated, using the manipulator gloves built into the observation creches. Reaching out with an armored fist, he gently picked one of the creatures up and tilted it over on its back to examine its genitalia. The small animal made no effort to resist, and when he set it down, it went back to its previous occupation of staring at the wall. Roylott made a hash mark in a small notebook he found in the lab coat’s breast pocket.

“So, that’s one for the guys. See? Easy as pie,” he reassured her.

“How can you tell them apart, doctor?,” she asked in confusion.

He favored her with a look that couldn’t decide if it wanted to be mocking or not. There was a possibility she was messing with him, or she honestly might not know. Janet seemed to like her, so he figured he’d go easy, just on the off chance she was being truthful.

He picked up another, tilted it over and held it up, so she could get a good look. The creature’s oversized bright pink scrotum was visible from across the room.

“See?,” he asked. “Just like people.”

“Oh, my,” she breathed, embarrassed and rapidly turning a bright shade of pink herself.

“The girls won’t have one of those,” he added unnecessarily. “So, you take the enclosure on the end; I’ll keep going on this one, and we’ll meet somewhere in the middle.”

“Yes, Doctor,” she acknowledged, and he went back to counting.

They worked in silence; the only sounds were the hum of the exhaust fans and the intermittent scratch of pencil on paper. It took Roylott a few minutes to work his way through all the creatures in the enclosure, as he was being extra careful to not do double counts or to miss anyone. He reached the end with a frown on his face, and a long string of hash marks on one side of the page. The other side was blank. Twenty-three males, and not a single female. A few seconds later, Palmer finished the creche she was working on, and was wearing a frown that matched his.

“Dr. Roylott, I think I may have done something wrong,” she admitted hesitantly.

“All males?,” he asked. She nodded.

“Mine too,” he affirmed. “Well, let’s see what’s behind Door #2. I can only hope it’s not a year’s supply of Rice-A-Roni.”

Carelessly thumping his notebook atop the observation port, he put his hands into the manipulators and started turning over squirrels, as nurse Palmer kept a running tally. They had counted six more males when Fraiser returned. They could hear her heels clicking down the hall long before she made it to the door.

“She always walk that loud?,” he asked Palmer. “Seven.”

Eve made another hash mark before answering.

“It’s the shoes. Everyone else wears rubber soles. Ninja secrets, you know.”

He snorted, a short burst of laughter.

“Eight.”

The pencil scratched again. The clicking heels loomed closer. Roylott reached for another squirrel.

It drew away from the glove, far back by the side of the enclosure, and showed clear signs of agitation.

“Now that’s different,” he mumbled, then made a quick lunge and grabbed the animal. It tried to slip through his grasp, but he had a snug grip. The other creatures in the enclosure started to become agitated, a fact which was not lost on him. He flipped the creature over, not loosening his grasp. 

A female. The first they’d found in… he checked the list. Fifty eight animals counted thus far, and only one had been female. And the only sign of activity had come when he’d grabbed the female. The agitation of all the other animals in the enclosure increased the longer he held the female.

Almost all, that is. There were two other squirrels on the opposite end of the creche that still stood, unmoving.

“Palmer,” he hissed urgently. “You see those two over there?” He nodded frantically towards to two immobile animals. Her eyes scanned the crowd and she saw them.

“You want to make any bets those two are girls, too?”

Fraiser entered the room at the same moment the first angry squirrels began to _skree_ in protest. The cry was quickly taken up by the others in the enclosure.

“Frank, what the hell are you doing?,” she asked, raising her voice to be heard over the angry caterwauling of the creatures. “You’re supposed to count them, not torment them.”

“Why, Grandma, what big teeth you have,” he snarked back at her.

The animals’ agitation had reached a tipping point. One of the males charged his armored glove, bashing its head into it again and again in an attempt to free the female. In rapid succession, two others followed suit. Roylott was considering letting her go when an idea occurred to him.

“What kid of sensor gear do these things have?,” he asked, nodding at the observation creche. Fraiser had to think for a second.

“Umm, temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, basic ventilation, nothing too… FRANK! That thing’s trying to bite your thumb off!”

Looking down he discovered it was true. One of the males had given up on headbutting his hand and was engaged in gnawing through the jointed metal of the glove’s thumb. He watched absentmindedly with idle interest as the miniscule teeth scissored their way through the hardened metal of the glove.

Fraiser watched him in growing horror as it appeared he was about to let the squirrel gnaw his thumb off to satisfy his scientific curiosity.

She reached over and shook his arm. 

“Drop it, cowboy. Right now.”

The tone of her words left no room for argument. It also left no room for discussion over exactly who was in charge. Roylott was a distinguished guest, but he was still a guest; this was Fraiser’s playground and she made the rules. The urgency in her voice seemed to yank him back to reality, and he promptly dropped the female with an unceremonious _plop_. 

For about three seconds, calm reasserted itself, then something happened that was completely and wholly unexpected. The males closest to the three females attempted to mount them and begin copulating. The females expressed little to no interest in this activity, and it quickly petered out, no pun intended.

Roylott pulled his hands out of the gloves and closed the miniature hatches, sealing the enclosure. He retreated a step or two, glanced around, and re-acquired his stool. He sat quickly and Fraiser thought he was rattled from the experience until he started rubbing his chin and muttering to himself. He was already deep in thought, and not the least bit frightened.

“So, ah, sensors?,” he asked Fraiser after nearly a minute’s cogitation. “Is there anything that can take air samples or run analysis on it?”

“No,” she answered, and was about to expound on the idea when the lights suddenly dimmed noticeably and the ventilation fans slowed down.

“What was that?, he asked worriedly. “Brownout?” The thought of being trapped hundreds of feet underground when the power went out didn’t bear much thinking about.

“They must have the stargate back up and running, she answered. His gave her a questioning look. 

“Our little friends caused a king-sized mess when they came through the gate: chewed up the main power coupling and knocked the stargate out of commission. They’ve been working on it ever since. That must mean it’s back up and running.”

“Yayyy for our side,” he cheered with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

“It also means we can re-establish contact with our off world teams,” she reminded him.

“Oh,’ he admitted a little sheepishly. Viewing the situation from an outsider’s perspective, he had forgotten there were other considerations besides his scientific curiosity.

“Is there any chance of finding a cup of coffee around here?,” he asked suddenly.

It was an unexpected, but entirely reasonable request.

“Come on,” Fraiser said, leading the way out the door. “We may even be able to find a sandwich to go with it.”

Roylott needed no second invitations.

 

 

“Capacitor bank B shows green at 100%,” Sergeant Siler said, then slammed the cover closed with a ringing thud. He looked up to the control room windows, where an expectant General Hammond had been watching him like a hawk for the last fifteen minutes.

“She’s all yours, General,” he shouted, giving Hammond a thumbs-up.

“Well done, Sergeant,” Hammond’s voice echoed through the intercom. “Stand down, son. You and your team have earned it. I think you’ll find something waiting for you in the commissary.”

Hammond could be a demanding taskmaster at times, but his people always delivered, and he wasn’t shy about showing his appreciation for them when they did. Unlike WWII theaters of operations where alcohol had been used as a second currency, he couldn’t reward them with booze, but there were other and better ways to make the same point. The tech team collectively snapped off a by-the-book salute, then headed off for a quick shower before heading to the commissary to discover what the culinary gods held in store.

“Walter, reestablish contact with P8X-362 and confirm SG-1’s status, then prepare to receive SG-9. They’re due back in twenty minutes,” Hammond ordered. Sergeant Harriman swiveled back around to his console, the gate address already half dialed, as he paged the armorer’s team to the gate room to collect SG-9’s gear. Walter was nothing if not efficient.

 

Carter finished tabbing her belt in place and listened to the rest of Daniel’s diatribe on tree sloths. It came across as more of a screed _against_ the animals than any attempt to inform the listener about them, and by the time he was done she was ready to take up arms and wage a war of extermination against creatures she hadn’t had any opinion on ten minutes ago. 

Jackson’s power of invective was prodigious, to say the least. It felt like watching old movies of Lenin haranguing the Russian workers in 1917. Truth be told, a sizable portion of his presentation had been lifted from just that source, only with ‘tree sloths’ replacing ‘bourgeoisie’.

A polite golf clap rewarded his efforts, and SG-1 resettled themselves into as comfortable a position as they could.

“Thanks, Teal’c,” she told her platform-mate with an appreciative grin. He made no reply beyond the semi-formal half bow he could use to such masterful advantage. It was half ‘I understand’ and half ‘this must be really embarrassing for you, so we’re not going to talk about it to spare your feelings’ and half ‘you’re welcome’. 

You may add that up and come to 150% and accuse me of bad math, but that was how Teal’c operated all the time: at 150%.

She thought the whole situation was really touching, from all of her teammates. As a unit, they all had to make the best of a less-than-optimal situation; allowing her a little extra leeway was a courtesy she greatly appreciated. Carter had never expected any special treatment on account of her sex, and would have vehemently opposed the same. She desired to be treated the same as everyone else, and for the most part, got her wish. 

There were instances, however, where biology got the upper hand on everyone, with the current situation being a fine example. The other members of SG-1 could have simply ignored her while she went about her business; that was how other field units dealt with similar circumstances. 

The genesis of this had its beginnings in a barely-civilized conversation she’d had with Colonel O’Neill, not long after their first barely-civilized conversation when she’d joined the team going to Abydos. She’d earned his respect on that first mission; he’d been crystal clear about that. Any courtesy she was afforded was born out of that respect.

But his respect for her was warring with the thousand generations of Clan O’Neill roaring from the hoary abyss of time, screaming into his soul to protect the women and children: the biological imperative that had motivated mankind since the first proto-man had swung down out of the trees.

They had come to an uneasy arrangement that had grown organically to where it was now. The Colonel had been a dear about it; they all had. So, yes, they might cut her some slack in bathroom arrangements in the field, but she knew full well they would all cut each other’s throats before doing anything that would strike against her self-respect. Or her dignity.

That was the crux of the matter. The inevitable bonds of community and affection that had grown up would prevent anything in the nature of condescension from happening. They genuinely cared about each other, and that led each of them to guard the others’ dignity more zealously than they guarded their own. While they were free to snipe at each other at will, an outside attack on any one of them would bring three instant counterattacks.

“Sorry you got stuck with ‘the girl’ this time,” she said, sitting cross-legged.

Teal’c regarded her from under an arched eyebrow.

“The thought had not crossed my mind,” he rumbled.

“Not even once?,” she coaxed. He frowned and the gold emblem of Apophis gleamed on his forehead as he leaned closer.

“I greatly enjoy our conversations,” he said simply.

“Oh, c’mon, Teal’c,” she needled. “You don’t ever think of me as just a girl?”

Carter bit her lip and adopted the innocent pixie-ish look that was as deadly as a loaded weapon. In any other case, this could be construed as shameless flirting, but she was teasing the big Jaffa, and both of them knew it.

“You are a fearsome warrior and a formidable intellect, Captain Carter,” he answered with great gravity. “I do not think you are ‘just’ anything. And I think anyone who does make that mistake commits a grave error.”

“Teal’c,” she said, suddenly serious, “that’s about the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in a long time.”

“That is a shame. Perhaps, as Colonel O’Neill says, you need to get out more.”

The eyebrow, she noted, was still arched. He might be treading lightly, but he was treating the subject seriously.

“The Colonel needs to mind his own business,” she said loftily. “He has no room to talk.”

“I do not think the Colonel would mind being ‘stuck with the girl’,” Teal’c observed to no one in particular.

“That’s a pretty wicked sense of humor you’re developing there,” Carter commented.

“My words were not spoken in jest,” he replied with a self-satisfied air.

Carter thought that through, considering the implications, then flushed bright pink to the roots of her blonde hair. Teal’c, noting her reaction smiled to himself, on the inside where no one could see. He did that a lot. He was pleased that his words had the desired effect.

She was saved from having to respond by the sudden KA-WHOOSH! of the activated stargate.

In an instant all four team members were on their feet, talking over each other on the radio. After a moment, three of them stopped, letting O’Neill have the floor. Rank had its privileges, after all.

Sergeant Harriman’s voice came through the radio, loud and clear.

“SG-1, this is Stargate Command. What is your status?”

“About damn time,” O’Neill grumbled, then toggled the mike. “Walter, we’re all in one piece. Where’s General Hammond?”

“Right here, Colonel,” Hammond broke in. “What is your situation?”

“Unchanged, sir,” O’Neill dutifully reported. “Sir, if you don’t mind my asking, is something else up? We were getting awfully lonely without you to talk to.”

Hammond grinned at O’Neill’s attempt at humor. The Colonel, he knew, had to be enduring his own special kind of hell, being trapped as he was. He quickly ordered Harriman to find Fraiser and her guest and get them to the control room, ASAP.

“Sorry, Jack,” Hammond explained. “Castleman’s uninvited guests got kind of rambunctious and knocked the gate out of commission. We’ve been working on repairs in the meantime. How are you all set for consumables?”

“We’re still good on food and water, sir,” he responded. “The battery situation is going to get kind of dicey in a couple of hours, but we’ve still got plenty of spares on the rover.”

“It’s just a matter of getting to them,” he commented under his breath with the mike switched off.

“Colonel, I imagine this whole situation is starting to wear on you,” Hammond began. O’Neill rolled his eyes and said, “Masterpiece of understatement,” still with the mike switched off. Hammond continued. “Stay in your position; don’t do anything rash. Dr. Fraiser is working with a xenobiologist from Area 51; I’m sure they’ll have some questions for you as soon as they get here.”

“ _Area 51_?,” O’Neill repeated incredulously, this time on live mike. “General, you know I love and respect you, but are you nuts?” 

Hammond smiled and couldn’t suppress a chuckle at O’Neill’s outburst.

“Jack, I told you I’d talk to the devil Himself to get you back. This man seems like a decent fellow, and there isn’t really any way he can work any mischief. Dr. Fraiser has him under her thumb so tight that when he blinks, her knuckles crack.”

“Sounds painful,” Fraiser commented, entering the room with Roylott at her heels. He was wide-eyed at being admitted this far into the inner sanctum of Cheyenne Mountain, so much so that he completely missed the coffee pot with a full carafe in the corner of the room.

Under Fraiser’s careful guidance, SG-1 related all the information gained since their last call-in, including Teal’c’s abortive attempt to reach the gate, as well as the aftermath of Castleman’s failed rescue. She and Roylott peppered them with endless questions about the creatures and their habits. When Carter piped up to give a bit of information, he gave Fraiser a puzzled look at the new voice.

“Captain Samantha Carter,” she whispered by way of explanation. Roylott’s face showed blank astonishment.

“Sam Carter?,” he repeated. “ _THE_ Sam Carter? What the hell is she doing out in the field? My God, losing her would set the gate program back… I dunno, _years_ maybe. Who’s bright-assed idea was that?”

Hammond frowned over at the two of them, peevish at the interruption. A little too late, Roylott recalled the protocol that only senior officers cursed in front of other officers, and tried to be as small and meek as possible thereafter.

The questioning went on for several minutes, until Hammond called a halt to it.

“Colonel, we have to shut down at our end. SG-9 is due back any time now; SG-6 and -11 have status reports in the next hour’s window. We’ll be in touch, people. You aren’t forgotten; hang on to that thought. Hammond out.”

At a signal, Harriman obediently shut down the gate. The mood in the control room was solemn. Hammond looked at Roylott through slitted eyes.

“I believe you had a question, doctor?,” he asked, dangerously.

Roylott looked around to make sure the person being addressed wasn’t behind him. At the moment, he’d have preferred to be in the isolab, or the commissary, or at home in bed. Anywhere other than beneath that flinty stare. He felt very tiny. Hammond started speaking in a friendly, almost genial tone that got a lot less friendly and genial as it went on.

“Captain Samantha Carter is a brilliant scientist and one of the finest officers it’s ever been my honor to command. Her father and I served together for longer than you’ve been alive. She’s an invaluable part of the SGC. Colonel Jack O’Neill was in special operations for over twenty years, serving this country in whatever hellhole the joint chiefs sent him to. He led the first trip through the gate and was responsible for detonating the nuclear warhead that killed Ra and freed the Abydonian people. Dr. Daniel Jackson figured out how to make the gate work; without him, there would be no Stargate Program. This is in addition to his being able to speak over 25 languages, and other assorted acts of academic genius. Teal’c is a Jaffa, an alien species subservient to the Goa’uld. He rebelled against his masters and saved SG-1 from certain death. On countless occasions since then, he or his knowledge of the Goa’uld has proved to be the wild card that has brought us success. Without these four people, Earth would almost certainly be under the rule of the Goa’uld System Lords.”

He gave Roylott a look that caused the doctor to shrink even smaller and move behind Fraiser, as though she was a bulwark that could afford him some sort of protection from Hammond’s nuclear wrath. The General continued.

“These are not just four random airmen. These are literally Earth’s greatest heroes. I will not, repeat NOT countenance leaving them stranded on an alien world for one second longer than absolutely necessary. Do we have an understanding?”

Roylott couldn’t find his tongue to reply, only nodded frantically. Hammond stalked from the control room, still giving him a cold glare. Roylott let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding and deflated a little.

“Wow,”” Fraiser observed, “the General must really like you.”

The thought gave him pause.

“He _likes_ me? What makes you think that? I feel about two inches tall right now.”

“If he didn’t like you,” she commented, “he wouldn’t have bothered with the history lesson, he’d have eviscerated you on the spot. Now let’s get that cup of coffee.”

“Sure,” he agreed, “but first I need to stop by the bathroom and change my shorts.” 

 

“So,” Carter said, warming to the subject, “any new ideas on how to get to the gate?”

She felt a bit more optimistic now that communication with the SGC had been reestablished.

“I have none,” Teal’c replied. “Our attempts to use force have been fruitless. My attempt to reach the gate was also met with failure. The tactical situation has not changed. The number of creatures surrounding us has neither increased or decreased. I see no avenue we have not explored, yet my instinct tells me Colonel O’Neill is correct. We are overlooking something simple. Perhaps this new doctor from Area 51 will be able to provide a solution.”

“You know, Teal’c,” she ventured, “you’d be right to not trust anyone from Area 51. The last run-in we had with them nearly cost you your life. Nobody would blame you if you weren’t really happy with their involvement.” He nodded, his brown skin gleaming like polished walnut in the sunlight.

“Be that as it may, I have great faith in Dr. Fraiser. Last time, she was in an advisory role. From General Hammond’s comments, I gather that this time, she is in charge. I am content with that arrangement.”

“Well,” she said with a fresh enthusiasm, “what shall we talk about?”

“I wish to discuss your social schedule of late,” he replied. “Or rather, your _lack_ of a social schedule.”

“Oh, no,” she said with an embarrassed, self-deprecating shake of the head.

“Oh, _**yes**_ ,” Teal’c insisted.


	11. Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Motivations are revealed  
> Secrets are concealed  
> And the importance of a Green Mustang becomes apparent
> 
> Salty language, as usual.
> 
> Oddly enough, SG-1 does not appear in this chapter of an SG-1 story. Go figure.

CHAPTER 11

In Which Dr. Fraiser Explains 

A Few Things

 

Roylott, still visibly shaken by his confrontation with General Hammond, staggered out into the corridor, following Fraiser at the best speed he could manage. Degrees in xenobiology didn’t prepare a body to withstand the onslaught of a two star general with decades of active duty service and a fiery temper, but what made matters worse was the fact that by nature, he was as non confrontational as a ventriloquist with a speech impediment. 

Fraiser noticed he was still a little rocky, and eased up on her usual rapid walking pace. She would have had to ease up in any event, for the closer they got to the commissary, the more people they encountered in the hallways. Roylott managed to emerge far enough from his dazed state to notice. 

On a typical military installation, this late in the day, things would be starting to wind down, as personnel finished shifts and headed to barracks, or home if they had off-base housing. In contrast, the SGC was just as busy now as it had been when he’d arrived. He mentioned this to Fraiser.

“The galaxy isn’t considerate enough to run on mountain standard time, Frank,” she said with a grin. “We currently have teams on six different worlds, and all of them have their own unique day/night cycles. We literally run on a 24 hour basis. Just like a bad horror movie: anything can happen to anybody at any time.”

A delightful scent was wafting down the corridor that roused the predatory instincts of Roylott’s inner carnivore. His stomach rumbled, reminding him in no uncertain terms that a solitary granola bar did _not_ constitute breakfast. Something smelled good. _Really_ good.

The two doctors entered the commissary immediately behind Sergeant Siler and his group of freshly scrubbed technicians. The toothsome aroma was emanating from a stack of styrofoam clamshells embossed with the logo of ‘O’Malley’s Pub & Grill’, which the rejoicing technicians attacked with the reckless abandon of hungry buzzards falling on a fresh zebra carcass. 

Fraiser and Roylott each grabbed a mug of coffee, then as an afterthought, Roylott filched a ham and cheese on rye. They settled into a corner, which afforded what scant privacy was available, while Siler’s crew got to work on a set of steaks almost large enough to need their own zip code.

“So,” he began, after a noisy slurp of coffee, “about two interruptions ago, I was asking if those observation bays had any kind of air sensor gear, and I think you were in the process of telling me they didn’t.”

“Yes, they don’t,” she answered, then immediately backtracked to see if that was a double-negative. Satisfied she was on firm grammatical ground, Fraiser explained.

“Those only have a basic environmental package; anything detailed will have to come from elsewhere. Why are you so interested in them?”

“Based on the animals’ biology, we’re on pretty solid theoretical ground to say that the pheromone emitter/receptor complex is very important to them as a species. Think back: that pheromone gland was bigger than most of their organs. That means it's going to pull a lot of blood, nutrition and other system resources. That’s no accident. Biosystems don’t allot vital material to dead ends; your appendix doesn’t get as much juice as your stomach, or spleen, or liver.”

“That’s straightforward enough,” she agreed.

“We kind of briefly danced around the subject earlier, but this is possibly a major means of communication for them,” he speculated around bites of ham and cheese sandwich.

“So you’re wanting some kind of air sensor to see if they’re giving off pheromones in response to stimuli,” Fraiser said, drawing the obvious inference.

“Yes’m,” Roylott confirmed. “I want to see if they’re emitting, and if they are, I want to see if they’re emitting different scents for different stimuli.”

“That _is_ interesting,” Fraiser commented. “So, we’ll need to detect, pull an air sample, evacuate the air in the chamber, then reset everything and go again.”

“Smart gal. You should try some sandwich; it’s much better than what we get.”

In answer, she took a long pull at her coffee. Fraiser had no trust for the mystery meat in the sandwiches. Roylott continued.

“The physical aspects of this should be pretty simple. Analyzing the chemical signature of the pheromone could be the sticky bit. Could be easy, or could be something we’ve never seen before.” 

He polished off the last of his sandwich and washed it down with the dregs of his coffee.

“Looks like you get your hands on my spectrophotometer sooner than you thought,” she teased. The coffee wasn’t too bad today, and she thought about going for a second cup.

“From your lips to God’s ears,” he quipped. “For a top-flight R&D facility, some of our equipment’s pretty embarrassing.”

“All right,” she said, getting back to business. “The observation bays have access ports, so we’ll be able to draw air samples from there. We’re going to need something to monitor the air. Any ideas?” He shrugged.

“I’ve been half-on, half-off thinking about it since we found that gland, but I’ve got nothing so far.”

“Well, you better make it full-on,” she admonished. “I’m fresh out of ideas, too.”

The meat-gorging technicians chose this moment to get noisier than usual. Someone had cracked a joke, and their table erupted in laughter. Fraiser looked over her shoulder at them in annoyance, then her eyes locked on someone.

“Siler,” she muttered, not meaning to say anything out loud.

“What’s a Siler?,” he asked.

“Siler’s a ‘who’, not a ‘what’,” she corrected him, “though on second thought, ‘what’ might not be so far off, considering how many staples and screws I’ve put into him.”

Roylott was thoroughly confused, a state which deepened when Fraiser abruptly left the table. She approached the noisy group, and horse-collared a lean, sandy-haired man, dragging him to their table, despite his obvious reluctance to leave his steak behind. He was introduced as Master Sergeant Siler, and Roylott’s confusion began to ebb.

He and Fraiser took turns explaining their problem to the Master Sergeant, who appeared to ponder deeply. Like most of Siler’s estimations, this was mostly for show: he’d discovered long ago that if you gave people an immediate answer, it was frequently dismissed, so he adopted the tactic of seeming to be in deep thought. It worked nearly every time.

“I can cannibalize an air quality sensor from one of the M.A.L.P.s,” he finally said. “It won’t give you any specifics, but it’ll let you know when something foreign is introduced.”

“That would be splendid, Sergeant,” Fraiser praised, while Roylott made vague noises of general approval. Siler gave his steak a forlorn look over his shoulder.

“I’ll get right on it, Doctor,” he said.

“Right _after_ your lunch,” she corrected, patting his arm. However much they might want answers, steak was still steak, a commodity more precious than diamonds. Gold and jewels might buy obedience, but steak bought loyalty, at least where airmen were concerned.

“Yes, ma’am,” he thanked her with a sense of relief before beating a hasty retreat to his plate, lest one of his fellows take advantage of his absence.

“All right,” Roylott said, rubbing his hands together. “Things are shaping up.”

On their way back to the their table they made a slight detour and got a second cup of coffee.

“There’s something I just have to ask,” Roylott said, sliding into his seat. “Exactly how did I wind up here?” 

“I asked for you,” Fraiser answered candidly, imitating his move, but much more gracefully. “By name. The off-world team is question is a vital part of this facility, in addition to being very good friends of mine. I wanted the best help I could get, and that is you.”

“Well,” he was slightly flustered. A thought occurred to him.

“Have you been keeping tabs on me since the Academy?,” he asked, a slightly accusing tone in his voice. Fraiser snorted.

“Don’t flatter yourself, cowboy. I’d completely forgotten about you until about six months ago, when I started getting report summaries from Area 51 written by a Dr. Franklin Roylott. If your name was Joe Smith, I’d have never caught it, but how many Franklin Roylotts do you think there are? You always had an interest in xeno, so it wasn’t hard to put two and two together.”

He’d deflated slightly at the revelation, but seemed to regain some of his confidence as she went on.

“So how did that happen?,” Fraiser asked. “You winding up at Area 51? Last I heard through the grapevine you were headed for Stanford.”

“That’s true enough, as far as it goes,” he replied, taking a drink of coffee. “If you go to the Way Back Machine in your mind, you might recall that my folks weren’t nuts about me going to the Academy.”

“That’s being kind, to say the least,” she admitted.

“Yeah. My dad wouldn’t talk to me the whole time I was there. That was tough on mom.” He paused for another drink.

“Anyway, after I left under,” he cleared his throat, “unusual circumstances, things normalized a little. When I applied and was accepted by Stanford Medical, I thought they were going to go through the roof with joy, my dad especially. When he found out I was planning on majoring in xenobiology, it was like when I joined the Air force all over again.”

“I just have to ask,” she broke in, “what’s his deal? It seemed like anything you did was never good enough.”

“I think he’s always had in mind that I’d be an M.D. and find a cure for cancer or something. I tried to explain to him that cancer research and family practice are two entirely different career paths, but that conversation is like trying to push spaghetti uphill.”

An uneasy silence jumped up, and they both sipped their respective coffees.

“After I graduated, reality sank in that there weren’t all that many gigs for a xenobiologist outside of NASA and SETI, and they’re all sewed up tight. I did a few ‘Guest Expert’ appearances on The History Channel and Discovery Network, but nothing steady.”

Those had been some pretty thin times, he reflected.

“Anyway,” he continued, “when I was at Stanford, I got married, and we’re now up to four kids, all girls. Throw in two dogs and a cat, and we’ve got a houseful.”

Fraiser’s eyebrows tried to climb into her hairline.

“ _Five_ women in one house? Do you have a death wish?,” she asked. He chuckled.

“Speaking of which”, he interrupted, “tell me the story of how your name came to be Fraiser, and how Mr. Fraiser was lucky enough to turn your head. I seem to recollect you were a bit singleminded at the Academy, and your focus was on guts, not on guys.”

“Not much to tell,” she explained with a grimace. “Everybody is entitled to at least one really bad screw-up in their lifetime, and that was mine. Mr. Fraiser, as you called him, was very handsome and very Italian. He was also very much a dismissive, controlling person, which I did not see at the time. “

“Not to be unkind, but it’s not like you to miss that, Janet. You’ve always been a razor when it comes to observation.”

Her scowl deepened and she shrugged.

“People who are smitten aren’t known for having the best judgement,” she offered. “The final straw was when he made me get rid of Eleanor.”

Roylott almost dropped his coffee mug.

Eleanor had been Fraiser’s prized possession when he’d known her: a 1967 Ford Mustang Fastback, named for the car in _Gone in 60 Seconds_. Whereas the original in the movie had been yellow, hers had been a moss green that was deep and dark and mysterious and gorgeous beyond description. 

“What?” He couldn’t believe his ears. It was a cosmic travesty, along the lines of using the original Declaration of Independence to wrap sandwiches in.

“He thought it was ‘too much car’ for me,” she clarified grumpily.

“You poor, dear thing,” he sympathized. The notion of forcing his wife to do anything was repellent, mostly because the idea was noxious, but also because he’d be found the next day in a ditch with his throat cut. 

“We separated not long after, and by that time, I wasn’t sad to see that happen.”

“I’m sorry, hon,” he said, wanting to be supportive, but not really sure how to. “Did you have any kids?” 

Fraiser snorted.

“No, we weren’t together long enough for that to happen. However,” she said, brightening considerably, “I adopted about a year ago. An incredibly bright, sweet girl named Cassandra, who has become the center of my life.”

“That’s great,” he replied. “Kids can really bring out the best in you, even if they stress the hell out of you in the process.”

They sat there for a moment, grinning at each other like they’d both lost their minds, enjoying the unique collective bond parents share, regardless of their child’s age. Slowly, Fraiser’s smile faded.

“Frank, there’s another reason you’re here.”

He took a nervous sip of coffee while she tried to figure out how to explain this.

“From practically the moment this installation went online, we’ve been butting heads with your bosses at Area 51. They don’t believe General Hammond has been aggressive enough in his administration of the SGC. Specifically, they aren’t happy he won’t do anything and everything possible to beg, borrow, or steal technology that can be used as a weapon.”

He nodded his understanding. He had seen several instances where the letter of policy had been used to circumvent the spirit of policy. Ethics was a rare and valuable thing in a facility operated by people whose unofficial motto was ‘Do Whatever, As Long As You Don’t Get Caught’; rare enough that it could be mistaken for being extinct.

“Ugh, that Maybourne guy is always bending my general's ear about offworld technologies,” he commented.

Fraiser went cold.

“Maybourne?”

“Yeah, Colonel Maybourne. Dark hair, snaky eyes. Tries to be ingratiating but comes off as super-creepy instead. You know him?”

“We have a history. If I were you, I’d keep that bit of information to yourself; Maybourne is not a popular man hereabouts,” she counseled.

“A sentiment I heartily share,” he agreed. “So you were telling me about… me?”

“I needed help,” she admitted. “More than that, I needed someone I could trust; someone who wouldn’t knife us in the back, or sell us out if they got the chance.”

“Speaking of chance, you’re taking a mighty big one, hon.”

She smiled a tight smile and shook her head.

“I don’t think so. People change over time; you’ve changed, but not that much. I’m comfortable with my decision.”

It was his turn to confess.

“Now that you mention it, I need to come clean, too. Obviously, I didn’t fly coach up here, right? I took an Air Force G3, and all the way up here there was this oily Lt. Colonel bending my ear about how I needed to keep my eyes open for anything, no matter how trivial it might seem. He made it sound like you guys are one step removed from being treasonous bastards.”

“Do you remember his name?,” she asked, trying to conceal her interest. ‘Oily’ and ‘Colonel’ reminded her very strongly of someone very disagreeable.

“Aaahh, ‘S’ something. Started with an ‘S’... gimme a second. Almost got it,” he was wracking his brain; he could visualize the man, remember the unctuous warnings, feel the same revulsion he’d felt before.

“Samuels. Lt. Colonel Samuels.”

Fraiser felt a chill go up her spine. Truly birds of a feather flocked together. It came as no surprise to find Maybourne holding the leash of a dirtbag like Samuels, but that didn’t make the revelation a welcome one.

“That is another piece of information I’d keep to myself,” she advised.

“I seem to be running with a bad crowd,” he observed regretfully.

“Frank, how the hell did you get tangled up with these people?”

It was a fair question.

“Well, one day, I’m sitting in my living room, looking at a stack of bills that ain’t getting paid and a pantry that’s pretty bare, when the doorbell rings. There on my doorstep are two earnest young men from The Air Force who have a job I’m perfectly suited for, only they can’t tell me about it, they have to show me.”

“Typical melodrama,” Fraiser commented.

“Well, I pack a bag, kiss my wife goodbye for what I hope is not the last time, and we climb on a government G3 and take off. The whole plane ride they’re being super intimidating: what I’m about to see is top secret, if I talk I’m looking at serious jail time, etc, etc. We land at Area 51, and I’m immediately whisked underground about 25 floors down, much like here. Next thing I know, I’m looking at a dragonfly with a two-foot wingspan and an eight-inch stinger on its tail. Then I read a doctor's report about a guy who got stung by one and almost turned into a dragonfly himself.” 

“Harlow,” Fraiser said with the grumpiest of frowns. Roylott looked surprised.

“Yeah, I think that’s what the doc’s name was. Friend of yours?”

“Hardly,” she spit the word out like it was venom. “The man you read about was one of our people; coincidentally, he’s one of the people you’re here to help.”

The whole incident had angered her to no end, and was possibly the closest she had come to cold-blooded murder in years.

“Dr. Harlow took quite a few ‘liberties’ with SGC regs, medical ethics and basic human decency,” she explained. “You read the report; they were willing to sacrifice one of our personnel to gain a better understanding of those parasitic bugs and possibly weaponize it to use against our enemies. I would add that was at the behest of Colonel Maybourne. File that tidbit away for future reference.”

“I’m glad everything turned out ok,” he soothed, glad her ire wasn’t turned in his direction. “Hopefully nothing freaky arises this time.”

The word ‘freaky’ made something _ping_ in Fraiser’s mind. Something about SG-1’s predicament and ‘freaky’ resonated, making her think she was missing a connection. Her frown shifted to a ‘don’t bother me, I’m thinking intensely’ expression. This would disturb her until she figured it out. It took several seconds for her to realize he was still talking, and when the words caught up to her brain, she jumped back to reality very quickly.

“In any event, I don’t feel like playing ball with them any more,” he said easily.

“Frank,” she said in a warning tone, “what are you talking about?”

“Don’t worry, doc, I’m a past master at looking really helpful without actually doing anything. I think Colonels Maybourne and Samuels are about to get a good dose of Frank Roylott being a difficult ass.”

“Frank,” she grabbed his wrist, “these people are dangerous. _Do not play games with them_.”

He pulled back in surprise at her vehemence, then patted her hand reassuringly.

“All right, all right, relax a little,” he soothed.

“No,” she snapped back, a little too hot. “No b.s. You’ve got a family to think about. If they think you’re not on their team… God, I don’t know what they’d do. Promise me, Frank.”

“Scout’s Honor,” he solemnly vowed, holding his right hand up in the Vulcan salute.

She was about to tear a chunk out of his backside for not being serious when a warning klaxon ripped through their conversation. Roylott jumped involuntarily, almost knocking her coffee mug over.

“What the hell was that?,” he yelped.

Fraiser checked her watch.

“Should be SG-9 coming home.”

Sergeant Harriman’s voice squawked over the intercom.

“Medical team to the embarcation room, ASAP.”

Fraiser seemed to levitate from the table and started for the door swiftly, white lab coat and navy skirt blending into a muddle of sky blue in blatant defiance of science, which stipulates that rapidly retreating objects should color shift to the red end of the spectrum. 

Roylott ruefully looked at the crumbs of his sandwich and decided that another probably wasn’t forthcoming. This was Fraiser’s arena of dominance, but he hadn’t had any instructions on what to do in the event this happened. He didn’t know whether to go or stay or hide in the closet. 

He probably should go back to the isolab. That would be the most prudent, reasonable thing to do. If anyone came looking for him, that’s where they’d expect him to be. The delightful Nurse Palmer was there, and if the airman who had taken his twenty dollars had returned, they could spend the time feeding the squirrels.

He had almost convinced himself to go when the other side of his personality reared up and metaphorically asked him what the hell he thought he was doing. He was a doctor, albeit of alien physiology, and there was an emergency of some kind going on. Sure, he hadn’t been asked to assist, but if doctors waited for people to ask them for help in an emergency, then nothing would ever get done.

He hustled out of the commissary, feet drumming on the cold concrete as he did his best to catch up to the sharp clicking of Fraiser’s shoes. He was middle aged and out of shape, but he had put in a lot of time chasing kids, so he was pretty good over short distances. Within fifty yards, he had caught up with her.

They ran into the embarcation room hot on the heels of Palmer and a physician’s assistant who were wheeling a gurney along at breakneck speed.

‘ASAP’ had an extra-special meaning at the SGC.

The gate had been activated, and General Hammond and three airmen stood at the bottom of the ramp, expectantly watching the undulating surface of the tame wormhole. Roylott skidded to a stop, open mouthed in awe. An active stargate, he decided, was what the word ‘awesome’ had been created for.

Hammond glanced their way at the commotion the medical team was making, then looked back to the gate before snapping his head back, and pinning Roylott with a glare.

“What is _he_ doing here?,” he demanded of Fraiser, gesturing at Roylott.

“My apologies, sir, I was in such a rush to get here, I forgot all about him.”

The General continued to glare at him, before giving a terse, “Stay back out of the way, young man.”

Roylott gingerly backed away and did his best to blend into the concrete wall.

The event horizon rippled, and the forms of two men materialized, carrying a third on a crudely constructed stretcher. They walked carefully, trying their best to not jostle the man they were carrying. Setting him gently down, they quickly stepped out of the way before the medical team bum-rushed them to get at the injured man.

“Major Kovacek!,” Hammond bellowed. “What the hell happened? This was supposed to be a peaceful planet.”

The CO of SG-9 met the General at the foot of the ramp with a rueful grin.

“Very peaceful, sir. Pastoral and idyllic and friendly as the day is long. Couldn’t ask to meet nicer people.”

“Care to explain?,” Hammond groused, watching Fraiser supervise Palmer and the assistant moving the injured man from the native stretcher to the gurney. He groaned in agony as they got him settled. “Doesn’t look all that peaceful to me.”

“Well, sir,” Kovacek explained, “Lt. Riley, being the youngest member of SG-9, and the most eager to foster good relations with * _ahem_ * potential allies, felt that it would be good to socialize with some of the more youthful natives.”

Hammond had a sinking feeling that this was going to end up with a Junior-Grade Lieutenant being court-martialed for dallying with native girls or something similar. 

“Socializing usually doesn’t involve stretchers, Major,” he pointed out, beginning to get impatient.

“I was getting to that part, sir. The inhabitants are very keen on sport, sir, and invited Riley to participate. He didn’t think it would look right to refuse, so he got right in the middle of their young men and mixed it up with the best of them. You’d have been proud of him, sir.”

Hammond started to relax, thinking that there might not be a potential interstellar incident hanging in the balance after all.

“Short version, Kovacek. I’m not getting any younger.”

“Yes, sir,” the Major acknowledged, straightening a bit. “Lt. Riley dislocated his kneecap playing the local version of lacrosse. He says it hurts like hell, and I shouldn’t be so damn stingy with the morphine. His words, sir, not mine.”

Hammond allowed the vestiges of a smile to twitch at the corners of his mouth.

“Very well, Major. How did the rest of the mission go?”

“As I mentioned, sir, exceptionally friendly people. As a matter of fact, General, they sent a token of their appreciation to you.”

As he spoke, Kovacek disconnected his rucksack from his vest, and opening the large compartment withdrew an ornately carved wooden box, a foot in length on each side and about four inches deep.

Hammond and Kovacek stepped to one side as the medical team wheeled the gurney bearing the unfortunate sportsman past them and off the ramp. Roylott stirred from his spot on the wall, moving to follow Fraiser and her team to the infirmary. He was still watching out of the corner of his eye, curious about the returning SG team.

Hammond eyed the box closely. It reminded him of an ancient British teapoy his grandmother had when he was a child. His grandmother had always been an intimidating figure to young George Hammond, so the association was not an altogether pleasant one.

Kovacek formally presented him the box, and he had reached out to accept it when something strange happened. The lid appeared to turn to dust and vanish, and an insect like creature scuttled out of the box and onto Kovacek’s hand. It bore a strong resemblance to a hissing cockroach, and gleamed with a blue metallic sheen.

Everyone who saw it was shocked into stunned silence, standing transfixed by surprise. The insect hesitated not a moment, but immediately jabbed two enormous fangs into the Major’s hand. He yelled, possibly from pain, but definitely from horrified surprise, and dropped the box. It splintered into fragments, and a mass of the insects boiled out of the wreckage.

Kovacek flinched instinctively and the insect on his hand dropped to the ground. The airmen who were in the center of the room were frozen in stunned disbelief, not sure how to respond, as insect infestation was generally dealt with by exterminators and not rifles.

Roylott had seen Kovacek hold out the box, and had watched in fascination along with the rest as Kovacek was bitten, but instead of freezing in place, had immediately started looking along the wall for something.

_Where is the fricking thing_?, he asked himself in frustration. _Where’s OSHA when you need ‘em?_

He spied what he wanted, and snatched at it desperately at the same moment the wooden box smashed on the floor. As the bugs began to scuttle away in all different directions, Roylott elbowed his way past Hammond, and yanked the pin out of the thing he had sought.

It was the biggest damn fire extinguisher he had ever seen.

He squeezed the handle and doused the scurrying bugs in a thick, icy curtain of CO2 fog. Most of them caught the full brunt of the first arctic blast and immediately froze solid. A few were still making half hearted wiggling motions, so he gave them another dose. The hollow blowing sound of the extinguisher was loud in the large room.

Hammond recovered his balance quickly, both physically and mentally. Fraiser was already moving to examine the wound on Kovacek’s hand, and the rest of the group started to mill around. Kovacek was bleeding profusely, so Fraiser slapped a tourniquet around his wrist, and hustled him in the direction of the exit, following the gurney as it rolled away to the infirmary.

Hammond gave Roylott a level look, measuring, evaluating.

Roylott, for his part, was still eyeballing the oversized bugs, making sure they were well frozen.

“Doctor,” Hammond said in a tone only slightly less frigid than the CO2, “I suppose you think that was a pretty smart move. Care to explain yourself?”

Roylott shivered, and not because of the tangible wall of cold he had created. Apparently, this was just not going to be his lucky day with Hammond.

“Uuuh, General, sir,” he panted, winded from his panicked search and lugging the big extinguisher around. “Freezing is the best way to kill insects while still preserving them for study. Chemicals or physical impacts will have adverse effects on specimens. Honestly, sir, I didn’t give it all that much thought. I guess it was a lot of instinct.”

“You didn’t,” Hammond repeated, enunciating every single word with painful clarity, “give it all that much thought.”

He let the sentence hang in the air.

“Doctor, this is a multi-billion dollar facility housing literally irreplaceable objects.”

Roylott closed his eyes and winced, fearing the scathing rebuke that was coming.

“Well done, Doctor. You're starting to grow on me.”

When he looked again, Hammond was gone, disappeared into the milling throng of airmen, utilizing the talent senior officers have to materialize and vanish with a skill that would make professional magicians envious.

“You’re welcome,” he said to the empty air, and sat the extinguisher down with a hollow metallic _clang_.

This had to be worth a sandwich, at the very least.

 


	12. Twelve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The twelfth and final installment of Squirrels From Hell.  
> There is the usual: salty language, slightly distasteful things implied but not shown, and I'm pretty sure I misused at least one semicolon.  
> There is also an epilogue and a postscript.  
> Neither are necessary to enjoy/ understand the story at large. You can read one, the other, both, or neither without fear of missing anything. As a matter of fact, there will likely be many who would prefer to NOT read the epilogue, but will like the P.S., just as there will be those who adore the Epilogue but would like to throw horseapples at the P.S. Take it as you like it. You were warned.
> 
> Not to belabor the point, but the P.S. transpires a couple of years after everything else happens.
> 
> Thanks tons for taking the time to stop and read.  
> Thanks tons more for those who felt moved to leave kudos.  
> And for those of you who left comments...  
> Well, God bless you, and if I knew where you were, I'd buy you a drink.

CHAPTER 12

In Which Things 

Fall Into Place

General Hammond sat at the conference table, listening to Major Castleman’s report. Immediately after the incident with SG-9 in the gate room, he had angrily dispatched SG-3 to the world Kovacek had visited. His instructions had been brief and terse: Find out what the hell happened, and if you have to rough up a few people to do it, I’m fine with that.

As it turned out, Castleman hadn’t found it necessary to rough anyone up, as he was explaining to Hammond. SG-3 had been welcomed with the same open arms that had met SG-9. The natives had been aghast at learning what had happened to Major Kovacek, for whom they had much affection. The story behind the box was also quite interesting.

“According to the elders,” Castleman reported, “two moons ago, the ‘gods’ came through the circle of standing water. They brought many gifts to these people, and left the box for… let me see, I want to use their own words.” 

He thumbed through his small field notebook until he came to the right page.

“...left the box for ‘our children, who will come to you as we have come to you. Give them this. Receive them as you have received us, and we will bless you with healthy children and good crops’.” 

He closed the notebook and tucked it back in his shirt pocket.

“General, the ‘gods’ they described were Jaffa.”

Hammond sat in stunned silence. The implications were staggering.

“Sir, is there any chance Captain Carter’s cold-dialing program could have been compromised?”

Hammond frowned, and if possible, looked even grumpier.

“Major, that world didn’t come from the cold-dialing program; it was from the Abydos cartouche.”

“Then how did…?”

Hammond slowly oscillated his chair from side to side, thinking furiously.

“We’ve always assumed that the Abydos cartouche was one of a kind,” he said slowly. “But that’s all that was: an assumption. If someone else has a similar cartouche, they could have figured out where we’ve been and where we’re going, and could be laying little traps like this for us.”

“We’ve been working off of the Abydos list for a while, sir,” Castleman rebutted. “Why suddenly start now?”

“The Goa’uld are a funny species, Major, especially when it comes to things they think are or aren’t important,” Hammond replied. “One of them may have just remembered about its existence, or…”

He trailed off into silence as another thought came to mind.

“...or one of them may have just come into possession of another cartouche.”

“And they’re leapfrogging ahead of us, poisoning the wells, as it were?,” Castleman speculated.

“Just so. In any event, we’ll be sending someone to Abydos to make sure they haven’t had any unwelcome guests lately.”

That would be a task best handled by Daniel Jackson, who was intimately acquainted with and/or related by marriage to half the population. Assuming he ever got off of P8X-362, that is. Hammond was starting to get irritated with all the loose threads that were dangling around the SGC these days. He was ready to start tying up a few of them. He liked tidiness.

“Well done, Major. You and your team are dismissed.”

Castleman gave him a by-the-book salute, and ushered SG-3 out of the room, as Hammond sat back in his chair and started thinking, long and hard.

 

Siler was a master of fabrication, Roylott couldn’t help but observe, as he had looked over the Sergeant’s modifications to the observation creche. The air quality sensor had been mounted on the end of the bay, next to the access ports where they would pull the air samples from. There had been three separate mounting pieces that had been machined specifically for this purpose by the sergeant, and aside from being unpainted metal, Roylott would never have known that wasn’t a factory job. 

He could really use a Siler where he was. He could really use one of those fancy-schmancy spectrophotometers, too. He could use a lot of this stuff. Maybe, the thought occurred to him, instead of moving all those delightful things to Area 51, he could move a certain Dr. Roylott to Cheyenne Mountain.

He was at the dissection table, toying with three irregularly shaped shards of wood, arranging, studying, rearranging, studying some more, absentmindedly chewing his lip the whole time.

The sharp click of shoes in the hallway announced Fraiser’s appearance long before she came into view. Roylott smirked, recalling nurse Palmer’s reference to her boss’ footgear. You really _could_ hear her coming from a long way off. She breezed into the room and laid her ubiquitous clipboard atop the observation bay.

“How’s Kovacek?,” he asked.

Roylott had made a quick and dirty examination of one mystery insects and found no sign of venom sacs or other appurtenances for delivering poison into a bite wound. Fraiser had treated Kovacek’s bite wound as she would have any other deep laceration.

“Itchy from the antibiotics I gave him, and impatient to get away from the infirmary. The wound channel was clean with no necrotizing visible, so unless he gets an infection, I think he’s in the clear.”

It was a bit of an oversimplification, they both knew. The absence of venom meant little; there could still be unguessed-at microorganisms, alien bacteria, and general nastiness that could cause any number of unwelcome complications for the bitten Major. For all they knew this could be the event that triggered the long-awaited zombie apocalypse.

“Whatcha doing?,” she asked, coming over to the table.

He fidgeted in his seat and scowled.

“Your airmen brought the alien bugs down here in a cardboard box. Apparently whoever gathered them up just swept them into a dustpan, because there were the dead bugs; a domestic cockroach, also dead; a fist-sized clump of hair and dust; and several pieces of the box the bugs came in.”

Fraiser gave him the facial equivalent of a shrug.

“Love our guys, but some of them aren’t the brightest,” she admitted.

“I figured you’d have your own forensic people go over the box, but I thought I’d play Boy Detective and give it a look. I was curious if there was any sign of a food source, or waste products, or anything that’d tell us more about them.”

“Find anything?”

“No,” he admitted, “at least not like what I was looking for. But, take a gander at this.”

He waved at the three pieces of wood he’d been arranging. 

“This appears to be part of the inside of the bottom of the box.”

The three shards formed a rough triangle. There was a figure carved on the wood, but it was hard to make out what it was due to the wood breakage.

“What is it?,” she asked, nose crinkling, feeling suddenly uneasy.

“Can’t tell for sure,” he confessed. “It looks like some sort of stylized dog, sitting or laying down; fancy dog like rich folks have. Vaguely Egyptian, mebbe greyhound or whippet, something like that. Hopefully your ‘smart’ team can make something of it.”

“The Goa’uld are neck deep in Egyptian mythology,” she reminded him. “We’ll have Dr. Jackson take a look when he gets back. He’s our resident expert on symbolism and alien cultures.”

“Fair enough. Now, Doctor Dolittle, if you’re done treating mosquito bites and looking at alien carpentry, I think your mice are ready for some attention,” he needled.

He got up, and walked over to the observation bay, rubbing his hands together like Scrooge McDuck looking out over an acre of diamonds. 

“Don’t be so modest,” she jabbed back, joining him. “They’re half yours. At least, that’s what I expect you’ll claim when it's time to pack up and go home.” 

He turned and gave her a quizzical look.

“ _Touche_ , Doctor. Well played.”

She paged Eve to the isolab, and then gave Roylott a brisk, “Let’s go.”

 

“All right,” he said, warming up, “the way this was explained to me was: when the sensor detects something out of the ordinary, the light will blink. At that point, we’ll pull an air sample, flush the air in the bay, refill, and go again.”

Palmer walked in halfway through his explanation, but she got the gist of it.

“They’ll only be without atmosphere for two or three seconds, so I don’t anticipate any problems on that end. We got everything we need?”

Palmer exhibited a tray of oversized syringes with needles removed, that they would draw the air samples with. 

“Anything else you can think of?,” he asked. “It’d suck to have to stop halfway through because we forgot something.”

“This step should be pretty simple,” Fraiser reminded him.

“So’s doing taxes, at least according to the government,” he rebutted. “But I take your point; just covering bases.”

“Quit stalling and get on with it,” Fraiser groused at him.

“Why Grandma, what big teeth you have,” he flinched away and stuck his hands in the observation bay’s manipulator gloves. Palmer screwed one of the syringes onto the appropriate port on the side of the bay, while Fraiser kept one eye on the air sensor and the other on what Roylott was doing with the squirrels.

“All right,” he muttered. “Going to pick up one of the girls.”

He moved his hand around the creche, scooting squirrels out of the way.

“Assuming I can find one,” he added. “I’ve never heard of a species that has a 25:1 male/female ratio. That kinda runs contrary to dang near everything I was taught in college.”

He started to get a little frustrated.

“C’mon guys, give your Evil Alien Overlord a break. I just want the women.”

He finally found one.

“Janet?”

“Sensor shows negative,” she answered.

“Here goes nothin’,” he said under his breath, and scooped up the female.

Almost simultaneously the sensor began blinking a dull, angry red and the males went berserk.

“I’m guessing that’s a ‘yes’,” he observed.

“Eve, pull your sample,” Fraiser ordered.

It only took a second for the nurse to draw the air sample and unscrew the syringe from the port. As soon as she was clear, Fraiser dumped the atmosphere from the bay and refilled with fresh air. All three were conscious of a light, delicate, musky odor that was subtle, yet pervasive.

“I hope this stuff doesn’t affect humans,” Roylott commented as the air pressure was coming back up inside the creche. “Apologies in advance if I beat anybody up.”

“Is that possible?,” Palmer asked, cringing involuntarily. Royott snorted.

“Trans-species stuff makes for good sci-fi, but bad science,” he replied smugly.

“I would remind you,” Fraiser broke in, “about Teal’c and the dragonfly.”

“And I will concede your point,” he said graciously, “while reminding you that was a parasitic infestation rewriting his DNA. Hardly the same thing.”

Palmer threaded another syringe onto the port.

“I’m releasing the hostage,” he said with mock gravity, and suited deed to word.

Again the sensor flushed a dull crimson.

“You’re free, little fur friend; run away, run away.”

“Pull your sample,” Fraiser ordered.

As expected, the males charged the three beleaguered females and attempted to copulate with them. Again, the females were having nothing to do with it.

“Interesting reaction,” Fraiser commented.

“Makes a certain degree of sense if you think about it,” Roylott replied. 

Her puzzled look invited explanation, so he obliged.

“Due to their size pretty much any predatory species they encounter will be bigger than them, right?”

She nodded to show she was following him.

“And given their method of attack, it’s highly likely they’d take severe casualties, right?”

Another nod followed the first. 

“The chief reasons for the success of the terrestrial rodent tribe are their ability to subsist on damn near anything, and their rapid generational cycles. These animals only agitate to protect the females, sustain heavy casualties in the process, then immediately impregnate and begin the generative process to replace lost members.”

Fraiser nodded, then flushed the air in the creche.

“Sounds plausible,” she said. “That implies that they have at least a loose sense of community. Sensor is reset.”

He grabbed a different female this time. The sensor lit up, Palmer drew an air sample, and the whole cycle was repeated.

“You’ve mentioned a couple of times about this being a means of communication,” Fraiser remarked. “Are you thinking along the lines of using it to communicate with them?”

Roylott snorted.

“I seriously doubt they’re communicating much beyond the level of ‘come here’, ‘go away’, and ‘I found something good to eat’.”

That gave her pause for thought.

“So when Dr. Jackson fed the first one…,” she trailed off. 

“That was the equivalent of ringing the dinner bell in front of a bunch of hungry teenagers.” He could see the thought was troublesome to her.

 

“I wouldn’t read too much into it, Janet. Pheromone communication aside, you’re still dealing with a minimum brain size and little to no social order. I’d be astonished if they were running on much less than 95% instinct.”

“So why the stress on this line of inquiry?,” she asked.

“Nothing else seemed to be promising,” he admitted. “If we can figure out the right pheromone, maybe we can make an off-world version of ‘Squirrel Away’ or something.”

The _ping_ in Fraiser’s brain was back; the sense that she was missing a vital connection. She chewed her lip and twiddled a pen around her fingers, hoping the whatever-it-was would fall into place. It didn’t.

“Flush,” Roylott prompted.

“What? Oh, ah, sorry,” she stumbled verbally, stabbing the appropriate button in embarrassment, still trying to think furiously.

“Unfortunately, instead of ‘Go Away’, I think we’re going to get a whole bunch of ‘Heyyyy Boyyyyys’,” Roylott grumbled in a poor attempt at a sexy voice. “I don’t think there’ll be much of a market for chipmunk Spanish Fly.”

“Spanish Fly,” Fraiser mumbled absently.

The missing link snapped into place.

“Hathor!,” she blurted suddenly.

“ _Gesundheit_ ,” Roylott responded, never at a loss.

“No, HATHOR,” she repeated more forcefully.

“Janet?,” he said, suddenly serious,withdrawing from the manipulator gloves. “Are you feeling ok? Woozy? Here, sit down for a minute.”

He took her elbow and tried to steer her over to a chair, but instead she jabbed him sharply in the ribs, then scurried over to the phone.

“Walter, this is Fraiser,” she said brusquely. “I need General Hammond in isolab 2, ASAP.”

Hanging up the phone, she turned to Roylott to explain.

“Last year, a Goa’uld calling herself Hathor was on base. While she was here, she wielded almost total power over the male population by means of a pheromone called _nish’ta_. She could appeal directly to the pleasure centers of their brain and could override any sense of duty or loyalty they normally had.”

“And?,” he’d caught her sense of enthusiasm but had no idea what to do with it.

She stabbed a finger at the observation bays.

“Pheromone number two causes extreme… erm, _randiness_ in the males, to the point where the females have to forcibly dissuade them. To use your example of Spanish Fly, it’s something that is unquestioned, probably completely instinctive on their part.”

“So if we can synthesize a large enough quantity of pheromone number two…,” he began.

“And we can deliver it on-site and far enough from the gate…,” she continued.

“Then, as Pink Floyd said, SG-1 can Run Like Hell,” Palmer finished.

Fraiser and Roylott looked at her, then each other for a moment, surprised at the usually taciturn nurse’s outburst.

“I’ll allow it; it _was_ good,” Roylott finally admitted with a shrug, “if unexpected.”

“My people are the best, cowboy,” Fraiser said beaming with pride. “You’d best not forget that.”

General Hammond swept into the room, followed closely by an airman carrying a Wal-Mart sack full of alfalfa pellets.

“Report,” Hammond rumbled. Generals didn’t much care for being summoned, so he was a bit more curt than usual.

“Sir,” Fraiser began, hugging her clipboard tightly, “we have them.”

 

It hadn’t required as much in the way of explanation as Fraiser thought it would. Part of it could have been Hammond’s innate intelligence, or it could also have been his unwillingness to dwell on the set of circumstances attached to Hathor and the ensuing hijinks she’d caused. Either way, Siler and one of his techs was summoned and set to the task of figuring out a delivery system while Fraiser and Roylott set themselves to the task of isolating and replicating the necessary pheromone.

After a few minutes’ discussion, the delivery end of the team decided to use a UAV dispensing an aerosol plume of pheromone, set to start twenty meters away from the gate. An airborne delivery system would avoid injuring any of the squirrels and setting off their berserk attack behavior, while at the same time enable them to spread the pheromone over the largest area possible.

Roylott settled himself behind Fraiser’s spectrophotometer, alternately cackling with glee to himself and crooning sweet nothings to the machine. Spectral analysis of the gas would identify the chemical compounds present, and from there, they should be able to synthesize what was needed. The only enemy now was time.

 

On P8X-362, Jackson sat and watched the sun begin sinking toward the horizon. He had exhausted the resources he had on hand to study the reptilians’ alphabet. His only course of action from here on out would be a painstaking character by character analysis of the scripts he had photographs and rubbings of. 

While the archaeologist part of him was in heaven, he was honest enough to admit this kind of undertaking would likely be farmed out to various assistants and other linguistic experts. Barring the discovery of an off-world Rosetta Stone, scholarship of this variety could conceivably take years. Years he didn’t have.

He was on the front lines of the war against the Goa’uld. Not just as a soldier. His expertise was a vital asset during first contact with alien cultures or human cultures that had been estranged for millennia. He was literally an indispensable team member. Discovering the intricacies of a long-dead alien language would be something left to others.

The thought made him sad.

At the same time, he reminded himself sternly, his focus was on Sha’re. All this gallivanting around the galaxy was fun at times, but it wasn’t the motivation behind his current involvement with the stargate program. Getting his wife and Skaara back was his prime goal; breaking the power of the Goa’uld and delivering the galaxy from their machinations was a nice secondary objective.

The turmoil in his mind was matched by a turmoil in his body. He was feeling decidedly unwell. He butt-scooted a little to one side and leaned against the remains of the stone bannister. As a matter of fact, he felt like complete and total crap.

O’Neill noticed his companion’s unease, and erroneously chalked it up to too many MREs.

“Feeling a little rough?,” he asked.

Jackson nodded, unspeaking.

“Don’t sweat it. When we get home, a glass of prune juice will set you right. I tell ya, those MREs will keep you alive, but they’re binding as a legal contract.”

“Jack, I don’t think...,” Jackson began, when he suddenly rolled over on his side and vomited over the edge of the platform. Luckily for the devil squirrels below, he was leaning over the shattered remains of the walkway, so the splash from what was left of his lunch missed them.

“Daniel!,” O’Neill shouted, grabbing a fistful of Jackson’s BDU jacket to keep him from toppling over the edge.

On the other platform, Teal’c had noticed Jackson’s distress and nudged Carter, directing her attention to their comrades.

O’Neill pulled the limp young man upright. His eyes were vacant and glassy.

“Daniel? Can you hear me?,” he asked, patting Jackson’s cheek.

Jackson blinked and gave him a dirty look.

“I threw up; I didn’t go deaf.”

The radio crackled.

“Sir,” came Carter’s voice, “the earbud batteries must be dying. This is right about the end of their expected life.”

“I was afraid you were gonna say something like that,” he grumbled.

He struggled to his feet and looked down at the rover where the spares case was, lying innocently atop some random dunnage. The ten feet separating them might have been that many miles in terms of how easy this was going to be. He’d been feverishly hoping someone’s rescue plan would pan out so he wouldn’t have to do this again. No such luck.

“Teal’c! Rope!,” he shouted, ignoring the radio.

“Is there anything we can do for him in the meantime?,” he quizzed Carter.

“Try wrapping his jacket around his head,” she answered. “It won’t do much good, but it beats nothing. The tighter the better.”

“Oh, it’ll be tight,” he muttered under his breath. “Matter of fact, his head may pop off.”

Slowly, painstakingly, Jackson unbuttoned his BDU jacket and O’Neill helped him wrap the garment around his head and tie the arms beneath his chin. When they were done, Jackson looked like a cross between King Tut and a Depression-era child with the mumps.

“Ow,” Jackson complained. “Ow, ow, ow, ow! I’m pretty sure Sam didn’t say you had to rub my ears off.”

“Hang in there, Mr. Whinypants,” O’Neill encouraged. 

A quiet whizzing, followed by a _thud_ announced the arrival of the carrier pouch full of braided rope. Moving swiftly, O’Neill dogged the cord around a stone upright and tied it off, giving the improvised lifeline an experimental tug. It held. He almost wished it hadn’t.

“Hold down the fort,” he ordered Jackson, “and if any Girl Scouts come by, I’d kill for a box of thin mints.”

Jackson’s slightly muffled, “You’re a dick, Jack,” followed him over the edge.

Intentionally not giving himself time for second thoughts, he swung out into space. Climbing the old-school way was a pain in the neck, especially considering how long he had trained with rappelling gear, but it _was_ just ten feet. Old guys could manage ten feet, he told himself. Even old guys with no gloves could manage ten feet. Hell, old guys on vacation with nothing to lose could manage ten feet. He was distracting himself.

Just that fast, he was hanging above the ground, looking for the best spot to land. Imitating Teal’c’s earlier landing strategy, he got close and then just scooted several of the creatures aside with a booted foot.

A foot wearing a chewed-up boot, he noted, trying very hard to not dwell on how quickly the previous rounds of devil squirrels had gone through the tough leather. Skin probably wouldn’t slow them down at all.

 _For Pete’s sake_ , he chastised himself, _they’re a buncha goddamn chipmunks, not great white sharks. Get a grip, ya candyass._

Shaking off the temporary funk, he settled to the task of tiptoeing to the rover. He shuffled over, never really picking his feet up, sending tiny puffs of gritty dust swirling around his ankles. The devil squirrels paid him not the slightest heed, even as several were unceremoniously shoved aside.

_That’s it, you furry jackasses. Nothing to see here. I’m just a big frigging bush, minding my own business. I’m even wearing green, see? Green things are friendly. Now, move along. I’m not the droid you’re looking for. Move along._

He was there. Quickly untabbing the cargo netting, he slid the case free, thankful these were noise-cancelling earbuds and not noise-cancelling helmets. Slowly, gingerly, he turned and began shuffle-sliding back to the platform wall. This had been much easier than he’d thought.

And suddenly, reality reared its head and gave him the karmic equivalent of ,”Hold on there, buckaroo.” The case was a briefcase style box-with-a-handle. No carry strap. 

How in blazes was he going to get it up?, he fretted. 

He wasn’t Hercules; there was no way he was going up the rope one-handed. He might grip the handle in his teeth as he climbed, like a pirate, but that sounded like a great way to break a tooth, and then he’d look like a pirate instead of just talking like one. He could ditch the box; all the earbuds would fit in one pocket, easy. That would mean recrossing ground and going back to the rover, so he’d have a place to set the case, which didn’t appeal to him all that much.

The only other option he saw was tossing the case up on the platform. That sounded great, but without a fully-functional Jackson to play catch on the other end, it might be kind of iffy. He could throw too hard and go clean over the platform. Conversely, he might go too easy and not get it to the top, and there was no way he could hustle around and catch a wayward case before it stirred up a whole lot of furry murder.

He braced his feet, sliding them a little wider, and gave the case a test swing. It wasn’t too bad, he decided, about the same heft as a six-pack, or one of those monstrous turkey dagwoods that Teal’c ate from time to time.

He mentally counted down from three, swinging the case in time to the count. He let it loose on the count of ‘one’, and it flew in a graceful arc that ended precisely at the edge of the platform, with one end dangling into the open air. As he watched in horrified fascination, it slowly tilted and dropped back to the ground. 

He leaned as far forward as he could and caught it just before it smashed into a group of squirrels, right hand darting out, snakelike, and snagging the handle out of midair. It was a magic move, one in a million, something to tell the grandkids about, assuming he ever had any.

The problem now was that he was seriously overbalanced and could feel himself sinking further and further over. He couldn’t take a step in any direction without stomping squirrels, and he knew it was only a matter of moments until he tumbled over. His flailing left hand brushed against something that moved, and a heartbeat later he realized it was the dangling rope. In a flash, he grabbed on for dear life, and stopped the slow-motion fall.

“Well, this sucks,’ he grumbled under his breath, and with a grunt of effort, used the rope to straighten up.

“DANIEL!,’ he shouted. “Nap time’s over. I need you to catch something for me.”

A low groan was the only answer, but a moment later, Jackson’s head, still surmounted by the textile topknot, peered over the edge at him.

“Grrunnnh,” was all the archaeologist could manage, looking worse by the second.

“So help me God,” O’Neill threatened, “if you ralph on me, I’ll stick these earbuds where the sun don’t shine; all eight pairs of them, at once.”

“Laaargh,” was Jackson’s only reply before collapsing back out of sight.

“Don’t sweat it, pal,” O’Neill said to the empty air. “You gave me what I needed: a target to aim at, and a backstop so I don’t throw these into the next county.”

With that, he braced again and heaved for all he was worth. He watched the case as it cleared the edge with room to spare, and a heartbeat after it disappeared, he heard a meaty _thud_ , followed by Jackson’s incoherent attempts to curse him.

He did his best to swarm up the rope in good pirate fashion. Pirates, he reflected, were generally represented as being considerably younger than he was, so he gave it his best, and instead envisioned swarming into someplace nice and tropical that served fruity drinks with paper umbrellas in them. Twenty years ago, it would have embarrassed him to need to use his legs to climb a rope, but at this point, he was happy to get to the top no matter how he did it.

He managed to get a leg over the platform’s edge, and levered himself over, skinning his knuckles in the process.

 

Jackson, he saw at a glance, was in pretty bad shape. He flipped the case open and dug out a set of earbuds. Jackson was making feeble attempts to untie his ungainly headgear, but O’Neill swatted his hands out of the way, and pulled the jacket off of his head.

“Do I have to turn them on?,” he yelled at Carter.

“No, sir,” she answered. “They’re pressure-sensitive. When you push them into his ears, they’ll turn themselves on.”

Without further ado, he plucked the old set out of Jackson’s ears and poked the new ones in. The effect wasn’t instantaneous, but he did stop groaning, and after a few seconds opened his eyes. He gestured for O’Neill to help him up, and together they managed to get him manhandled into a sitting position.

“I have got,” Jackson declared quietly, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands, “the mother of all headaches, and I think she gave birth, because I feel a whole lot of baby headaches coming on.”

“Take it easy,” O’Neill soothed. “You were looking pretty rough there.”

“I was about to ask you to shoot me,” Jackson admitted.

O’Neill pinched the earpieces out of his ears and slipped a new set in, then put two more sets in the carrier pouch and set it zipping over to the other platform, where soon Teal’c and Carter were performing the same operation.

“Sun’s going down,” O’Neill observed. “Probably about an hour ‘til full dark. Gotta admit, I’m not really looking forward to spending another night here.”

Jackson shrugged. He was looking better by the minute.

“I’m honestly shocked that General Hammond hasn’t figured something out by now. I thought they would have been in touch with us before now, one way or the other.”

“Who can fathom the mysterious ways of Generals?,” O’Neill asked rhetorically.

 

“What is it?,” Hammond asked, skeptically eyeing the beaker of yellowish fluid.

 

The chemical analysis hadn’t taken anywhere near as long as Roylott had anticipated, though it had been more than long enough for him to fall in love with a whole roomful of Fraiser’s equipment.

“Isopropylidene cyclopropyl propionate,” he answered the General. “It’s incredibly similar to a sex pheromone secreted by female cockroaches. I would say that officially makes your little alien rats the weirdest creatures I’ve ever come across.”

Hammond had been around enough scientific mumbo-jumbo at this facility that the presence of a chemical compound with a name longer than his arm didn’t faze him in the least.

“Will it work?,” he asked.

“That’s a very good question that I don’t have an answer to,” Roylott replied brightly. “We’ve refined it and made it stronger, ten times stronger, in fact, but we’ve been waiting for it to cool off before we test it.”

“Part of the synthesizing process involves heating the material to near-boiling temperatures under a great deal of pressure,” Fraiser explained. “The synthetic structure can’t be cooled artificially, or it breaks down. It has to shed heat on its own. It’s almost done.”

“Close enough,’ Roylott said impatiently. He drew a single drop of the yellow liquid off in a glass pipette, and approached the observation bays.

“Palmer, open her up,” he ordered.

The nurse released the tension clamps and swung the hinged lid back out of the way.

“Can you tell which ones are the females?,” she asked him.

“At this point, I really don’t think it matters,” he answered candidly. “We’re not trying to make baby squirrels, just wanna find out if our homemade Indian Love Call is the real deal.”

He took his thumb off the end of the pipette, and dropped the single drop of enhanced pheromone on the back of a random squirrel. At his nod, Palmer closed and sealed the observation bay. For a moment, nothing happened.

Then all hell broke loose inside the creche.

Roylott watched for a few moments, then turned away. Fraiser and Palmer, being more hardened, watched for nearly a minute.

“Dear God in heaven, Frank, what have you done?,” Fraiser asked softly.

Roylott was standing by the dissection table, swishing the cold dregs of his coffee around in his mug, making a visible effort to get himself under control.

“That was unexpected,’ he finally managed to rasp in a dry tone.

Hammond cleared his throat.

“I think it’s safe to say that it works,” he growled. “As far as lures go, I can’t imagine one better. Siler’s team will be in contact when they’re ready for you. I don’t anticipate it will be long.”

 

“Carter?,” O’Neill radioed. “How’re you guys set for sterno fuel?”

She took a moment to flip through her rucksack and take a brief inventory.

“We’re good, sir. Four cans; more than enough.”

After a moment’s consideration she went on.

“This weather has really been a blessing. If it was cold or rainy this would have really sucked, sir.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Captain,” he replied. “This trip has been chock full of suck.”

Carter grinned at his grumpiness, knowing that at least half of it was for show. She had toggled the mike to remind him that they had been in worse jams before, when the sudden sound of engaging chevrons made them all twist around just in time to see the gate’s event horizon form.

“It’s about damn time,” O’Neill growled.

“Sierra Golf One Niner, this is Hammond, do you read me? Over,” came a very familiar voice crackling over the two way.

“Sierra Golf One Niner reads you five by, General,” O’Neill answered. “I’m very happy to hear you, sir. We were beginning to get a little concerned.”

“All right, Colonel, we’ve come up with a Plan B, and I think you’re going to like it.”

“General, I already love it. What is it?”

Hammond laid out the plan step by step. At the same time, Sergeant Siler was supervising his team very carefully loading the enhanced pheromone into the UAV’s aerosol dispenser, a reflective silver cylinder attached to the bottom of the airframe. It stuck out like a big mirror-bright egg.

After the misstep with SG-3’s abortive rescue attempt earlier, everyone was anxious that this operation go off without a hitch. Roylott and Fraiser were in the control room, lurking in a back corner, out of Walter’s sight, practically trembling with eagerness.

Hammond finished explaining the plan to O’Neill and asked for the Colonel’s input.

“Wait one, sir,” came O’Neill’s terse reply.

 

Hammond glanced around and spied Roylott and Fraiser in the corner.

“How confident are you this will work?,” he asked.

“General, sir, it’s got to work,” Roylott answered. “It was devised by a genius.”

Hammond’s eyes narrowed to slits. Regardless of the truth or falsity of the statement, in his worldview unchecked ego was repulsive.

“Got a pretty high opinion of yourself, doctor?,” he asked in a dangerous tone.

Roylott looked shocked.

“I wasn’t talking about me, sir,” he said giving Fraiser a gentle shove forward. Hammond caught the message, and broke into one of his rare grins.

“Well done, people.”

 

“Daniel?,” O’Neill asked, “You look awful, but do you feel like a little jog? A hundred-yard dash, then you get the blue ribbon, the trophy, and a trip home.”

“Jog, hell,” Jackson answered, getting unsteadily to his feet. “If it means going home, I’ll race your ass.”

“That’s the spirit,” O’Neill encouraged. “We’ll make a proper pirate of you yet.”

“Carter! Teal’c!,” he shouted, “be ready to run. Hammond has an itchy trigger finger.”

He toggled the radio.

“Good to go on this end, sir.”

 

Hammond hit the intercom switch.

“Sergeant, is it ready to go?,” he asked, voice booming in the embarcation room.

Siler gave him a thumbs-up.

“Transferring launch control to your station now, sir. She’s all yours.”

“Clear the area, son,” Hammond ordered. “We launch as soon as you’re gone.”

Three seconds later the gate room was empty.

 

“Daniel,” O’Neill was cautioning, “when you hit the ground, keep your knees bent. If they’re bent they act like shock absorbers; if they’re straight, they’ll hyperextend, or God forbid, break. And I ain’t carrying you.”

 

“Launch!,” Hammond ordered.

The UAV catapulted through the stargate amid a cloud of exhaust fumes. The second it disappeared through the portal, Siler’s team reappeared as if by magic and began breaking down the catapult and hauling off the components. It wasn’t as daunting a task as it sounded: the launch system had been designed to be assembled, operated, and disassembled by a six man team. Siler had eight, so they were quicker.

 

“Careful of the ground, Carter,” O’Neill was being free with his warnings today. “It’s a little irregular, and this would be a bad time to take a tumble.”

“No sweat, Colonel,” she replied, giving him a million dollar smile. “Just like jump school.”

The UAV erupted through the event horizon and motored away from the gate, like an ungainly white pelican carrying a shiny silver fish next to its belly. Twenty meters out, there was a muted _pop_ , and a dim mist seemed to form under the aircraft and then trail along behind it. The drone was moving at its slowest possible speed; the idea was to draw the devil squirrels away, not to outrun them. 

The mist gradually settled to ground level, and for a moment nothing happened. Then the squirrels began to become collectively agitated. They seemed to be caught between the urge to attack and the urge to mate. The _skree-skree-skree_ which was their characteristic call, became deafening. A few began to squabble and fight among themselves.

The four members of SG-1 watched tensely from their vantage point on the stone platforms, ready to run, hoping that this time everything would go as planned.

The squirrels’ agitation seemed to hit critical mass. The entire clearing began to throb with an ugly, sullen feeling that concentrated on the UAV. Millions of dark, beady eyes traced its low flight path, feeling the instinctive urge to protect the females, to pull down their prey, to feast, and to mate.

The aircraft banked slowly, circling around the edge of the clearing, gradually moving further and further away from SG-1’s position. Millions upon millions of devil squirrels shadowed its movements on the ground, their instincts inflamed by the pheromone cloud that was having the opposite of its intended effect. Instead of being driven to mate, they were consumed with the urge to kill, rend, destroy, consume.

As SG-1 watched in astonishment, the masses of squirrels began to form into what O’Neill had taken to thinking of as a ‘Rat Tsunami’: waves upon waves of the tiny creatures packed into such density that they became, in essence, a living, breathing tidal wave of murderous fury. The human onlookers saw the wave try to pull the low-flying UAV from the sky.

That was about the time O’Neill snapped out of ‘sightseeing tourist mode’ and back into ‘get my team the hell out of here’ mode. There weren’t more than two dozen squirrels between them and the gate, the rest being further off trying to catch the UAV. Unbeknownst to them, but knownst to us, those were the females, who were, once again, unaffected by the pheromones, and not interested in playing the boys’ games.

“CARTER! TEAL’C! BLOW!,” he shouted. “C’mon, Daniel, time to go.”

The younger man hesitated at the edge of the platform for just a second, but to his credit, jumped off just as readily as any of the rest. O’Neill tossed both of their rucks to the ground, then followed them a moment later. 

“General, we’re headed to the gate,” he radioed. “Shut it down so we can dial home.”

“Acknowledged, SG-1. We’ll put out the welcome mat for you.”

O’Neill toggled his mike.

“ _DO NOT STEP ON ANYONE_ ,” he cautioned. “We don’t wanna mess up whatever mojo Hammond’s working over there.”

The gate shut off with a noticeable _foop_! that always made him feel slightly homesick. He got Jackson dusted off and headed in the direction of the DHD. Teal’c and Carter, he saw, were almost there already.

“Feeling better already,” Jackson huffed, short of breath. “It’s kinda nice to move around a little.”

“What’s gonna be nice is a hot shower,” O’Neill corrected. “Now hustle. If those things get tired of chasing their tails, they might decide we look like nice, tasty meatsicles.”

Teal’c was dialing the gate, so O’Neill and Jackson didn’t even slow down as they went past, though O’Neill did shake a finger and remind him, “Loser buys!”

The light patter of feet told them Carter was immediately at their rear. As soon as he heard the distinctive _ka-WHOOSH!_ , O’Neill dug out his GDO and sent the encrypted code authenticating their identity. It was slightly pointless, as Hammond knew they were incoming, but rules were rules, and there was no sense turning into bug splat on a windshield because of not following the rules.

Forty yards. They were home free. Thirty yards. Don’t step on any stragglers. Twenty yards. Dodge. Ten. Weave. Five. Juke. Home. 

O’Neill shoved Jackson across the threshold, stood aside and gave Carter a casual gentlemanly salute as she went through, then gave Teal’c a solid whack on the back as he went by. He turned and looked out across the clearing. The setting sun was reflecting off the UAV’s fuselage, painting the gleaming metal in tones of fire. The silver aerosol canister burned like a coal from the pit of hell.

While he watched in amazement, the aircraft began a gentle bank to the left, and as its wing dipped, the Rat Tsunami surged upward. It couldn’t have missed the wingtip by more than a foot. His natural curiosity wondered how long until they finally caught it, and what they would do with it when they did.

He told his natural curiosity to go fly a kite and scooted up the stone platform.

O'Neill slid through the event horizon and rolled onto the grating in front of the gate, almost bowling Carter over. 

“SHUT IT DOWN!,” he bellowed.

She scrambled out of his way and looked at him surprise. The handful of seconds he’d delayed while taking a last look around had seemed like an eternity to her.

"Are you all right, sir?," she asked, forehead crinkling into a frown. 

He grimaced and tried to stand but couldn't.

"Oh, I stepped on one of those damn things going up the platform and rolled my ankle."

Carter smiled and extended a hand to help him up.

"Come on, old man," she said, "let's get you to the infirmary."

"Oh, how sharper than a serpent's tooth is the tongue of woman," he grumbled, accepting the proffered hand and gingerly getting to his feet. His ankle was beginning to throb.

"Was that Shakespeare, sir?," she asked, still grinning.

"Listen, Carter, no cracks about growing up with him, or needing a senior citizen's discount, or any other that other stuff you young whippersnappers think up."

Teal’c and Jackson had already surrendered their weapons and gear to the waiting armorers and had witnessed O’Neill’s dramatic entrance. Teal’c stood in stoic silence, wondering at the subtleties of human customs, especially the more obscure aspects of their mating rituals. 

Jackson was thoughtful. The last twenty four hours had been an interesting interlude in more ways than one for SG-1. Each of the four had spent substantial amounts of time in what was essentially forced introspection. That was healthy, and given their hectic lifestyle, was something that likely didn’t happen as much as needed. He found himself wondering how this experience would change them individually and as a group; how they viewed themselves and how they related to each other. 

Carter and O’Neill handed their weapons and other sensitive gear over to the team of airmen waiting at the foot of the ramp. He leaned heavily on her shoulders and they started making their wobbly way to the blast doors. Carter slid an arm around his waist to steady him, and slowly, painfully they hobbled in the general direction of Corridor 1A. 

Just before they reached the door, O'Neill mumbled something under his breath, and Carter burst out laughing before quickly covering her mouth with her free hand. 

Jackson watched them leave the embarcation room. It might have been his imagination, but it seemed as though Jack was leaning on Sam a little more heavily than necessary.

Yeah, that was it.

Probably just his imagination.

 

 

Epilogue

 

Janet Fraiser slouched lower into her seat. This had been one hell of a day no matter how you sliced it. Her initial concern over her friends’ predicament, rekindling her old friendship with Frank, the excitement of doing a little pure science for the first time in a while, the anticipation of seeing her idea put to work and then succeeding, all made for a rollercoaster of a day.

O’Neill had hobbled down to the infirmary where she had treated him for a simple ankle sprain. Each member of SG-1 had been checked out in their turn. Dr. Jackson’s difficulties had been temporary in nature; even his headache cleared up once on the earth side of the gate. Teal’c and Carter were in normal condition.

Well, Teal’c was in normal condition. Fraiser recalled how Sam had been quite agitated over O’Neill’s injury, seemingly more so than a sprained ankle warranted. She had hovered. She had been underfoot. Not to the point of being a nuisance, but thankfully her own exam had come along, allowing Fraiser to order her from the room. She made a mental note to talk with Sam about that the next time the opportunity presented itself.

At the same time, Roylott had been busy packing specimens in dry ice and generally overseeing all the things he would be taking back to Area 51 with him. He also supervised the return of the living devil squirrels to P8X-362. It wasn’t as complicated an operation as it sounded. The animals were returned to their cardboard boxes, which were, without fanfare, tossed through the stargate and onto their home planet, leaving them in neither better nor worse shape than when they had come through as Castleman’s uninvited guests.

He finished that activity and went looking for Fraiser about the same time SG-1 finished their checkups, so it was only natural the two parties met. The team members had expressed their gratitude for his contributions to their rescue and he had given them all hugs, starting with Sam and ending with Sam. Teal’c had not known what to make of the gesture, but he handled it with his customary aplomb, accepting the sentiment for what it was.

The group had broken up shortly thereafter. Roylott left for Peterson AFB where a jet was waiting to whisk him back to Area 51. SG-1 had hit the showers before retiring to their respective homes. Fraiser had dismissed Nurse Palmer for the evening. That left her sitting alone in isolab 2, fervently hoping the day was almost done. 

With a little luck she could finish tidying up here and make it home in time to fix a late dinner for herself and Cassandra. Her adoptive daughter was pretty forgiving with her occasional tardiness. It didn’t hurt that Cassandra was intimately familiar with what she did at ‘work’, and understood that her mom’s schedule didn’t always follow a 9 to 5 routine.

But for the moment, she was going to bask in the temporary glow of sweet success.

A quiet tap on the door frame interrupted her basking. She looked around to see General Hammond enter and wonder how he had managed to soft-shoe down the hallway without being heard.

“Your staff in the infirmary said you’d still be in here,” he said, voice uncharacteristically subdued. Something about his manner set off warning bells in her head. He was withdrawn, almost hesitant. Something was wrong. She had seen George Hammond in nearly every conceivable situation and knew his moods and how he reacted to things. Whatever it was, was bad. Very, very bad.

“Shortly after leaving Peterson air space, Dr. Roylott’s plane radioed they were having engine trouble, and dropped off of radar. Rescue teams have reached the area and started searching, but so far… nothing.”

The words hit her like a punch in the gut. The terrain south of Peterson was a rugged maze of mountains and canyons. The likelihood of anyone surviving a crash there was practically nil.

_Oh, sweet Jesus, Frank. No. No. No._

She started to crumple back into her chair, and Hammond could see her fight to hold on to her composure. He also had grown to like the pudgy xenobiologist, but he knew Fraiser’s ties with him went back for almost two decades. This hurt her, badly; by extension, it hurt him as well. Fraiser was one of his people, and when one hurt, they all hurt.

He didn’t want to continue, but he knew that she, of all people, had a right to know what was going on.

“Their distress call was made on an open channel, not the encrypted frequency Air Force flights use.”

Her head snapped up. Her eyes were wet with suppressed tears, but there was fire blazing behind them, too.

“Sir, they would have had to turn off the encryption transponder and disable half their commo gear.”

“I know, Doctor,” he soothed. “Most of the western United States heard that distress call.”

Her mind flashed to their last conversation. He had mentioned thinking about putting in for a transfer to Cheyenne Mountain and getting away from some of the darker influences at Area 51. She had warned him again about not doing anything rash. He had tried to calm her fears, pointing out that with the kids in school, he couldn’t possibly make any moves until next summer. That had mollified her somewhat, but she had still extracted a solemn vow that he wouldn’t do anything foolish.

“Area 51 responded to the initial mayday,” Hammond rumbled, “but then they immediately went dark, and no one from there has had any involvement since. All the search and rescue is being coordinated out of Peterson.”

Fraiser drew a shuddering breath.

“Sir, you don’t think that the black ops people had anything to do with…?,” she couldn’t bring herself to finish the question. She didn’t need to.

“That’s exactly what I think, Doctor,” Hammond replied with a touch of his regular growly self. “This was no accident. Somebody wanted to make damn sure he was out of the picture. That same somebody was sending us a message, and they wanted us to get it even if we weren’t listening.”

She could tell by the look in his eyes that the fires of hell were banked in his soul. This had lit the fuse of his temper, and it would do a slow burn until he found out who was responsible. Hammond had no patience for the deceitful, the underhanded, or the dishonorable. Heads would roll. And he would roll them.

She couldn’t stop thinking about the family Roylott had left behind. 

Especially the children. 

Not so long ago, she would have had no frame of reference for their loss, but since adopting Cassandra, and starting to build a family together…

Yeah, she had a frame of reference.

Fraiser cradled her head in her hands and fought the urge to dissolve into a fit of sobbing. Hammond could see her reserve begin to slip, and knew it was time to leave. She needed to start coming to terms with her grief, and he held her in high enough regard to give her as much time and space as necessary. He placed a kindly, almost grandfatherly, hand on her shoulder.

“Janet?”

She looked up in surprise. He had never called her by her given name before, instead preferring to use her rank, or pay her the respect due to her title. She could tell instinctively that she wasn’t hearing from the General, George Hammond, but from the man, George Hammond.

“We will get them. I don’t know when, and I don’t know how,” he shook his head sadly , “but I promise you, we _will_ get them.” His face set, and she could see the glint of steel in his eyes. 

“Every. Last. One.”

He gave her shoulder a gentle, reassuring squeeze, and then he was gone.

Fraiser slouched lower into her seat, hugging herself. 

This had been one hell of a day.

 

POSTSCRIPT

December 23, 2002

On a dead world, in a backwater system at the outer rim of the galaxy, a stargate activated. The chevrons circling the device’s rim glowed briefly before the portal energized with the familiar faux-splash. Three figures stepped through the stone ring and surveyed their surroundings.

A hundred yards away from the gate were the stone ruins of what appeared to have once been a rather ornate building. Rust-colored stains from oxides leaching out of the rock streaked the few remaining upright walls. At the base of one wall was a multi- wheeled vehicle of some sort. 

The ruins and stargate were in the middle of a sizeable clearing, perhaps a quarter of a mile across, which was ringed by thick forest. Thin, scrubby grass covered dry red dirt. A light breeze ruffled the sparse growth, kicking up little dust devils that swirled briefly before dying out.

The three figures were encased from head to toe in armor, an eclectic mix of chain mail and plate armor that gleamed in the sunlight. Steel caps protected their heads, while not obscuring the markings on their foreheads. These were Jaffa.

Weapons at the ready, they stepped down from the stargate. The warrior on the far right wasn’t paying attention to where he was walking and stumbled over something, falling flat on his face in the process. The warrior in the center, the apparent leader, knelt and studied what the first had tripped over. 

It was a cardboard box, easily recognizable to you or I, but a great source of puzzlement to the rest of the galaxy. The warrior studied the box closely, mouth moving slowly as he attempted to decipher the printing that covered its surface. Two more similar boxes lay nearby. Satisfying his curiosity, he straightened, and activated a hand-sized communications device, directing the beam through the still-active stargate.

“Reporting,” he said, speaking into a tiny microphone. “The ruins are where my Lord Anubis said they would be, but I fear we may be too late.”

A voice squawked from the communicator.

“There is a strange vehicle in their midst,” he replied. “Also, at the base of the Chappa’ai were three containers of a type I do not know.”

The voice squawked again.

“They bear the sigil of a Goa’uld I am unfamiliar with. It is an inverted arc, surmounted by the sign of a star, and a letter I do not recognize.”

The voice squawked a third time.

“Yes, my Lord. If I decipher these symbols correctly, then this is the property of the first Prime of Amazon. I have never heard of such a System Lord. Is my Lord familiar with him?”

There was a long pause before the voice squawked a fourth and final time.

“It shall be as you command, my Lord,” the leader answered obediently.

The stargate abruptly shut down, and he turned to his fellows.

“We are to return through the Chappa’ai immediately,” he explained.

A pair of puzzled expressions met his pronouncement.

“My Lord Anubis is still marshaling his forces,” he explained. “As of yet we are not fully prepared to engage in large-scale warfare with any of the System Lords. We must be stealthy, and remain hidden until the time comes for Lord Anubis to declare himself openly. We dare not risk discovery for such a meager prize as what we might gain here. Whoever this Amazon’s Prime is will have to wait for his reckoning.”

He puffed out his chest in a disgusted huff.

“Enough talk! Lord Anubis has spoken. Dial the gate.”

Thirty seconds later, there was only a light breeze, ruffling the sparse grass, and kicking up little dust devils in the red dirt.

And now you know the story of how three lazy airmen inadvertently reduced the size and destructive scope of an intergalactic war.

End


End file.
